Stream: Letters to Cleo, ‘Can’t Say’

Daiana Feuer on October 20th, 2016

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Letters to Cleo (Photo by Justine Ungaro)

Last week, Boston alternative rock heroes Letters to Cleo released “Back To Nebraska,” their first new music in 17 years. It’s a five-song EP that picks up right where their treasured albums of the 1990s left off, as if the band was just unfrozen from an iceberg unscathed by anything that’s transpired in music since. This is good news for fans of the year 1993 and Kay Hanley’s adorable voice. Hanley’s joined by all the original members, Michael Eisenstein, Stacy Jones and Greg McKenna, who describes their reunion as “a blast.” He says, “We went out and lived our lives and now everyone’s bringing their experiences back to this at a new level of musicianship, but writing with these guys still feels effortless.”

“Can’t Say” is the first single and the first one they wrote upon getting together again. Hanley says, “Greg sent Me, Michael, and Stacy a work tape containing snippets of ideas that he’d been messing around with. When I heard the chord progression for this one, it immediately popped for me so we chose it as the basis for our first writing session. Like many (or most) Cleo songs, I wrote a dummy lyric as a place holder while we worked out the arrangement. As it turned out, I kept most of what I wrote that first day and the ideas kept coming after that.”

This is one 1990s band we are happy to see again.