From the pages of the CMJ New Music Report, Issue: 662 - Apr 17, 2000

What is perhaps most remarkable about this debut is not the vast number of ideas that float around its 50-odd minutes, but that they are so articulately and coherently presented. Consisting of Jay and Tim Nackashi(BeeKeeper) and Alex McManus(Lambchop, Vic Chesnutt), Empire State emanates from nowhere near the band's namesake - it actually hails from Athens, Georgia, to be exact - and the outfit approaches its music like an arts installation, combining samples with real instruments and homemade objects passing as instruments, often simultaneously. The album shifts between oddly catchy rock-ish songs (driven by reedy, wobbly vocals that recall early Brian Eno), calm instrumentals that almost waft into High Llamas habitat, and clamorous, clattering, earthquake-in-a-bell-factory cacophonies. This combination of weird sounds, weird songs and weird subject matter is an iffy roposition on paper, but Empire State somehow makes it all work beautifully. -Jem Aswad

from milk magazine... Empire State's debut release sounds like Howard Finster's sculpture garden come to jubilant musical life. The first song, "Collapse," isn't even really a song; it's simply what sounds like warmly hissing steam. "Equal" is an oddly beautiful melange of Chinese-sounding gongs and bells augmented by car horns. The album is not all aural esoterica, however. When the Nackashi brothers, Jay and Tim, and Alex McManus graft lyrics and singing onto their sonic sculptures, the results are intoxicating. The briskly sung verses of "Pie Pan" find release in an infectious chorus reminiscent of eighties band The Balancing Act. The song concludes with a yearning lyric, "Home, I want to go home," repeated as the song winds downs and expires. The album as a whole, though, feels slight. The instrumentals are admittedly inventive and captivating (the majestic horns of "La La Land" come to mind) but the expert songcraft of "Pie Pan" is frustratingly underutilized. Let's hope the members of Empire State decide to couple their love of fun-trick noise-makers and penchant for pop more consistently for album number two. ? Don Leibold