Chin Up Chin Up: Chris Dye, Jesse Woghin, Greg Sharp, Jeremy Bolen, Nathan Snydacker.
Personnel: Jeremy Bolen (vocals, guitar, banjo, harmonica); Greg Sharp (vocals, piano, organ, synthesizer, percussion); Nathan Snydacker (guitar, synthesizer); Cale Parks (vibraphone, marimba); Chris Dye (drums, percussion); Brian Deck (percussion).
Additional personnel: Cale Parks, Brian Deck.
The music of Chicago's Chin Up Chin Up is expansive and insular at once, earnest and slightly ironic, anxious but also freewheeling. The band's sophomore album refines this phalanx of contradictions on a canvas of avant-pop indie rock that colors in the spaces with hooky melodies, off-kilter structures, and guitars that chime, sing, and churn. THIS HARNESS CAN'T RIDE ANYTHING shows this Windy City quartet dedicated to raising the bar on inventive, artful songcraft and arrangements while still turning in an accessible guitar rock album that sparkles and shines.

Spin (p.96) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[R]efreshing, breezy rhythms propel densely intermeshed guitars and Jeremy Bolen's incantatory vocals."
Alternative Press (p.188) - "[The album] finds the band maturing, but with their sense of whimsy still intact. Throughout the record, singer Jeremy Bolen croons with the flamboyant bravado of the Killers' Brandon Flowers."
CMJ (p.5) - "[With] avant-pop hooks and cozy melodies..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.114) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Chip Up Chin Up's second full-length set springs with a vigour and bounce that belies its two year gestation."