Featuring the guitar fireworks and snarlingly tough vocals of Kate Eldridge, the band Big Eyes started their career as a kind of punk-pop hybrid with some garage rock swagger added in, as their initial albums, like 2011's Hard Life, demonstrated. As lineups and locales changed, the band moved toward a dual guitar attack that owed much to '70s rockers like Thin Lizzy. By the time of 2019's album Streets of the Lost, the group sounded like an updated version of mid-'70s AOR. When Eldridge's bands Cheeky and Used Kids split up, she formed Big Eyes in Brooklyn in 2009 along with bassist and Kicking Spit/Seasick alum Mark Bronzino and drummer C.J. Frederick. They debuted with a demo 7" and cassette the next summer, followed that December by the Why Can't I 7" for the Don Giovanni label. The trio embarked on their first U.S. tour as 2011 began, offering a self-titled EP that spring. Big Eyes' full-length debut, Hard Life, arrived that summer for Don Giovanni, as the group relocated to Seattle, parting ways with Bronzino and bringing in Keith Spencer to handle bass duties on the road. For the band's second album, 2013's Almost Famous, Eldridge unveiled a new Big Eyes lineup, featuring bassist Chris Costalupes and drummer Dillan Lazzareschi. 2014 saw Eldridge return to New York City, and she assembled a new edition of Big Eyes. The group expanded to a quartet, including guitarist and backing vocalist Paul Ridenour, bassist Malcolm Donaldson, and drummer Griffin Harrison. The new Big Eyes headed into the studio to cut album number three, Stake My Claim, which was released by Don Giovanni Records in August 2016. After a big tour with Joyce Manor, the group hit the studio -- in Cincinnati with producers John Hoffman and Jerome Westerkamp -- to record their fourth album. The lineup now included drummer Scott McPherson in place of Harrison and Ridenour's brother Jeff on bass, and the band had a new label home as well. The Brooklyn label Greenway Records issued Streets of the Lost in early 2019, an album that honed the band's hard-hitting, hard rock sound to a fine, radio-ready point. ~ Chrysta Cherrie