“Lord I Feel It” is the title of the first song offered by Lead Stones on their astoundingly affecting “Set + Setting” collection – though more than the title, it’s the natural reaction, the eventual declaration of the listener.
It doesn’t take long to feel it, with guitars guilty of attempting – and achieving – a feedback-fueled liftoff on the opening seconds, drums anchoring a rhythm that not only holds a steady beat but also seems to egg the band on toward explosion, leaving only the dreamy, docile keyboard stabs underneath it all to keep the peace. With the vocals added to the mix, the Lead Stones crash easily through our skin and soul, and Lord, we feel it. Adding harmonies – like those that follow the song’s sung confession, “Lord, I’ve thrown away more than I thought I could own” – gives additional weight to these Lead Stones, and makes their sound irresistible.
“Set + Setting” as a whole provides equally memorable and moving combinations of harmonic overdrive at every turn – and, appropriate to its title, Lead Stones seem to be under doctor’s orders to fulfill their potential of seeing their songs “serve as road maps for new interior territories.”
A wonderful cover of “Here Without You” by the brothers Byrd comes as a bonus, yet shows the road maps to be no less illuminating whether highlighting new territories or trails pioneered previously, and offers the Lead Stones an opportunity to truly take flight despite their great weight. But it is “The Breaks” that reminds us most of a trip to past aided by winged-creatures – only here we hear something more, a unforgettable, heavy hymnal to the disciples of the universal joke.
Download “The Breaks” by Lead Stones from “Set + Setting”
Lead Stones create massive mind music that reveals itself in countless, contrastingly microscopic and panoramic moments of magick. Feel it.
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” Ursula K. “Gentle Giant Rules” Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
Revolt of the Apes 
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