Clock Hands Strangle follows-up their 2007 debut, Redshift/Blueshift (Team Grizzly) with Distaccati; an evolution of their Bob Dylan/Joni Mitchell-inspired indie folk-rock, refined with a measure of pop sensibility. Distaccati was mixed by legendary producer Geza X (Germs, Dead Kennedys, Meredith Brooks) at Satellite Park Studios and will be available June 16. Live at WMSE contains four songs recorded in-studio at WMSE at the Wisconsin School of Engineering during CHS’s 2009 winter tour and will be available digitally only on May 12.

While many were quick to label the debut as a concept album, thematic would be more apropos. The distinction being that singer/songwriter, Todd Portnowitz is incapable of penning lyrics without poetic introspection and philosophical flourish, making every verse a proposition, every line a reflection. In the title track – with Walt Whitman as his Virgil – Portnowitz embarks on a journey through the cosmos, resembling Dante’s descent into hell. Out in the depths of space, where the “black current rolls like a centipede’s feet,” and the stars are “golden silk spiders, floating on the sea,” Whitman gives Mr. Portnowitz a tour of the grand nowhere.

During the course of Distaccati, Clock Hands Strangle takes their listener on a pilgrimage from an arid desert to the concrete miasma of New York City to an Alabama cotton field; to a place where the moon gripes of its eternal solitude and stone questions its sculptor. Rich with sentiment and beguiling cadence, Distaccati never consciously attempts to be anything more than the sum of its 11 tracks.