sailing by night

While a student at NYU in 2001, Daniel Rossen, later of Grizzly Bear fame, started a project with Fred Nicolaus that would become Department of Eagles. Whitey on the Moon, their first LP, is a weird one; very different from the music that fueled his wildly successful career. Assembled with pirated recording software on a borrowed microphone, it’s mostly beats and samples, and in many ways it’s a dreadful mess.  At the same time, it’s also this.

We’ll get to Grizzly Bear later.  Hell, we’ll get to Department of Eagles circa 2008 later.  Both are excellent.  For now though let’s begin where they began, before the lights and the studios and the money and the fame:

Some nobody kids, in a dorm room, kicking ass.

“Picture me glistening overseas…”