Ted Billings former fronter and chief songwriter of the criminally overlooked and now defunct Age Rings has returned with a cracking new outfit, Philosophical Zombie and an impressive debut LP, Loneliness Is Blue And Not Blue recently released on NYC’s Killer Wail Records.

Philosophical Zombie occupies similar terrain as Billings former band, Age Rings but with a little more grit. After a short stint in Brooklyn, Billings wrote and recorded the album after returning home to the South Shore of Massachusetts. He was unsure of what would become of the new material before playing the tracks for some friends and hooking up with their newly launched Killer Wail Records, the label founded by Jessica Zambri ( x Zambri) and Noel Heroux (x Hooray For Earth). 

The LP opens with the sludge pop anthem, All Men which sets the table for the albums 10 track with intelligent lyricism laced with liberal doses of guitar fuzz. Elsewhere tracks like Liar and Garden Grows Regardless, find Philosophical Zombie churning out ragged and effecting songs. Even when the walls of guitar cacophony threaten to drown these track Billings delivers a quantum sized pop hook to keep things teetering but never collapsing under their own weight. Loneliness Is Blue And Not Blue is as balanced as it is unfettered, an LP chock full of exemplary rock songs from start to finish.

Philosophical Zombie play The Ash Gray Proclamation Presented Harvest Home Benefit this Sunday at The Nosh Tavern in Plymouth, alongside Loser, Cameron Kieber of Eldridge Rodriguez, & Burglary Years.