Bryan Simpson, the mastermind behind The Whistles & the Bells, offers some insight and background into Modern Plagues: I wanted to make a record that sounded like some great cosmic dinner party. Not a gross, homogenized one where people bludgeon their intellect with one-sided conversation... but more of an, "if you could invite four people from history over for dinner who would it be?" kind of shindig. Ya know where you say Abe Lincoln, John Lennon, Joan of Arc maybe Truman Capote/Mark Twain or some other strange collection of human heavyweights. But fast forward the evening past the pretense and the niceties of the appetizer course and push "record" as the party polishes off the last drop of an encore bottle of wine. I wanted to sonically interpret what a cosmic intersection of such varied DNA might sound like. The air thick with cigar smoke and opinions... brazen jokes and deep truths... ideas being batted around like a quinceanara piñata... soap box soliloquies making surgically precise cuts in the belly of bloated traditions and ill-conceived concepts... The whimsical, the mundane, the transcendent, all sharing the same bed of nails... somehow, sonically grasp, and for that matter, celebrate, the fragility of man in light of the grace of his Creator.... alas, in reality, I think it sounds a little more like a muggy Saturday night out in Coney Island with Soren Kierkegaard and Malcolm Muggeridge eating hot dogs and cotton candy nervously climbing in for a second ride on the Tilt-a-whirl. Exiting 40 minutes later-the best kind of woozy. 11 songs... till death do us part. Hope it does something to ya.