Deer Tick

John McCauley and Deer Tick have long walked a tightwire between total despair and fractured resilience, but Negativity represents a heroic leap forward on virtually all fronts for the Providence, Rhode Island-based band. Recorded earlier this year in Portland, Oregon with legendary producer/musician Steve Berlin (The Blasters, Los Lobos, and last year's McCauley side project, Diamond Rugs), the album –Deer Tick's fifth full-length studio release, and follow-up to 2011's acclaimed Divine Providence – is McCauley's most personal work thus far as well as the band's most undeniable and universal, their famously freewheeling musical approach refined here into a gloriously cohesive whole.

Deer Tick – sounding as sure-footed as one would expect from a band who have spent a couple of hundred nights each year on stage for more than half a decade – more than match the strength of the songs by taking a more detailed approach than on some of the breakneck recordings of their past. Heartbreaking, fist-pumping, and ultimately life-affirming, Negativity stands as an indisputable high water mark for Deer Tick – a defining collection from a rock 'n' roll band driven by an undying faith in the power of redemption and transcendence.