The Chad Sipes Stereo is pleased to announce the release of The Soft Center of the City, the group’s second album and a follow up to 2006’s A Working Life. For The Soft Center of the City, the band decided to honor a new raw sound by recording the album in their personal studio/rehearsal space in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The Soft Center of the City combines Chad Sipes’ distinctive vocal style with Erik Cirelli’s soaring guitar and Paul Smith’s explosive rhythms. Sipes, Cirelli and Smith put on their producing hats, and hired Barak Shpiez of Spearhead Audio to engineer the record. The band recorded twelve tracks over four days in January 2007. Thematically, The Soft Center of the City is a departure from A Working Life. The new album examines troubled relationships between men and women through aptly titled songs such as “The Crooked Strait,” “The Crutch,” and “Beautiful Divide.” Sipes also uses humor to reflect on character struggles, as in “The Sound of the Suburbs,” a raucous, jazz-tinged examination of suburban America’s search for individuality and uniqueness. With thoughtful, poetically practical lyrics and sharp, white-hot instrumentation, The Soft Center of the City captures The Chad Sipes Stereo at their eclectic best. -Jeffrey Martin Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.