Off the Map, H-Burns' fourth album, is an album labeled, engineered, mixed and mastered by Steve Albini. And it's pretty obvious: fourteen tight songs carved in eight days, by five people (drums, guitars, keyboards, bass), without ever leaving the studio. After the critical success of We Go Way Back and the recent collaboration with Chris Bailey of the legendary Australian band The Saints, H-Burns continues on Off the Map to move towards a sound which is less and less harsh, but instead wider and wider. H-Burns dropped the plaid shirts, and now they truly have become a great classy rock band, a band that doesn't know any borders. Off the Map is a world-record where the concepts of maps and territories are the cement of the lyrics, in a total symbiosis with the sound: brass performed by the musicians from Wilco's latest albums, a drummer who hits a snare drum from the 1930s, keyboard parts played on vintage instruments that sound like they haven't been touched for years.
