Category: Rock

TRACK | Gen Pop – Bell Book Candle

5/5 golden merles

Olympia-based Gen Pop’s “Bell Book Candle” is some good guts on display, smearing and smashing guitars decay alongside some thundering and twisted vocals. The production is a fair simulation of the unadorned and apparently undeniable.

I have no idea if the title/chorus is based on the Richard Quine directed film from 1958 or Pope Zachary’s 8th Century decree of excommunication for “exceptionally grievous sin.”

But my name is the same as that Pope. And I did once cohabitate with a Siamese cat. And I did recently watch Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. These combined attributes make me more qualified than most to tell you with some authority that the track is good regardless.

TRACK | Grayson Hamm – Wasted Days

5/5 golden merles

Some nights I dream too loud.

“Wasted Days” is a particularly dreamy track concerning how one goes about parsing and processing time which is considered carelessly or poorly spent.

The production summons a form of much delicate weaving and luster. Concurrent piano and guitar drawl in subdued elaboration, insulating the reverie. Intricately overlaid, wending the way forward, each instrument aligns sequentially and percussively without tangling.

The central thesis of the song concerns the totality of experience: taking the good with the bad and recognizing them as two pieces of a greater, inextricable whole. That all happenings accumulate, the exact origins of influence are not known, and our choice of actions after the cumulative events can always contort fate to good.

It’s a lovely track full of treble and tremble, bearing much quiet resolve and confirmation of agency.

TRACK | battle ave. – i saw the egg

5/5 golden merles

It’s with some conviction I say that battle ave.’s “I SAW THE EGG” is a great relief. It is a rarity within the indie/lo-fi rock genre to produce works of properly grandiose anthemic builds. And to achieve this within a 2 minute framework is even more impressive.

The underlying characteristics feel rightly justified in their ascent: beyond the layered textures there exists a vibrant language. The scenic phrasing introduces a compelling, strange, and a fine utilization of symbols, conveying some ancient accusations, seemingly derived in part from reconnoitering and part the recollection of a vision.

Each well introduced element –Vocalization, then organ, then a hook laden synth-scale, then digi drum and backing vocals– emerges in a sequence that consecutively raises the stakes without being overcome by doubt and retreating before the next tier. The song commits to this scaling, never finding an agreeable plateau and settling in, rather always pushing just a bit further into the approaching empyrean.

Full of precarity and becoming, it is a good and small wonder. The additional 4 tracks available in preview are very much worth a look and promising as well. A valuable document, the album releases April 1st.

TRACK | Baston – Maybe I’m Dead

5/5 golden merles

Baston’s “Maybe I’m Dead” is more great French garage-pop, this time from Rennes. The lyrics are speaking to a need for escape, both from the world through reading/consumption of media and in deviating personally from the tired, daily routines that arbitrarily determine every interaction.

Profuse, enchanting hooks are built within the melodic structures of familiar guitar-bass lines, which are in this case utilized to convey much discontent. While the contents themselves address a desire to escape, the style is genial and possibly celebratory.

The primary concern is structures and norms that have had their value hollowed out and appear to remain only fixtures in our daily lives due to the cultural habit known as tradition. The song is just one more means of attempted escape: unable to escape the world, an additional media is constructed specifically so that this style/aesthetic may also be hollowed out and tunneled through.

And this contradiction is an interesting dichotomy, the taking of pieces/forms from the past in an attempt to build in the present a future worth having. There’s ultimately no escape but accompanying the author on the route itself provides some nice commiseration.

TRACK | Special Friend – High Tide

5/5 golden merles

“High Tide” is built of sterling garage-pop components and moves assuredly from strength-to-strength, no sequence a weakened, broken, or missing link.

Across the soundscape the fuzz’d bass and rhythm guitar are largely reading as one united instrument, beams of the lead guitar’s higher note hooks punctuating the greater haze. The complimentary backing vocals arise harmonious, steadily elevating the chorus and bridge. The drums guide everything toward its assured, abrupt conclusion.

The song is doing well what it intends to do. If you still maintain the capacity to hear things and earnestly assess them, evenly, I don’t think you can fault its form. There is craft, well realize, and in it some sense of purpose.

ALBUM | Pega Monstro – S/T

5/5 golden merles

Beginning with one of the finest false-starts in all of garage diy, “Homem das Obras” soon emerges from the ocean an outlier. The track inventively takes a mutative structure with much great and organic ebbing and flowing.

The varied pace of its enduring, sequential waves operating on a gently obscured internal logic, or some secret formula of intent. And invariably these decisions work.

The LP is kept fresh in this way, avoiding the rut of traditional structures that must rely on additional layering or lyrical phrasing to keep the core from collapse.

These techniques are employed throughout the LP, complimenting its energy-drenched 4 track recording. It is truly some of the most structurally inventive garage pop you’re likely to come across. And constantly capable of innovating without alienating from the doctrinal genre forms and methods, each turn is another effuse with radiant texture and tone.

Pega Monstro is an inspired and valuable document. It is flush with rad melodies and teeming with spatial invention across the soundscape. It can be streamed or purchased here.

TRACK | The Paperhead – Africa Avenue

5/5 golden merles

The highly concentrated “Africa Avenue” from The Paperhead is a rich and lovingly detailed pop psych-folk tune. When this track comes up on the increasingly infinite mix cycle it is always welcome.

Each segment has a transition that is as thoughtfully crafted as the larger structures of the various verse/chorus/bridge. It has a manner of unfolding that is teeming with small flourishes of experimentation and acts as an excellent opener to the wider album set.

The primary mover of the thing is the forthright vocal performance, gilded in melted down gold records that had gone into disuse.

TRACK | Rude Television – Exactly

5/5 golden merles

I originally heard Rude Television’s “Exactly” on the great onetwoxu.de, if you are looking for more superbly well curated garage and punk rock.

The track has a euphoric and exacting production. The appropriately applied phaser and reverb laminate the vocal and guitar lanes, encasing them for posterity, not so much to keep them pristine but rather preserving the filth intact.

A strong melody that rises out of the gentle mire, echoing and effective. The synths careen about the upper ranges, harmonious. Emitting from a blown gasket on the outer reaches of West Palm Beach, Florida, the tones are said to be a curative elixir, or at least pretty good for what ails you. Anyway, it probably can’t hurt.

Pre-order on the bandcamp. The album releases in a couple of days on the 18th, I am looking forward to hearing the remainder.

TRACK | The Numerators – Dead

5/5 golden merles

“Dead” is Psych-Surf circa 2013. With a loping start that builds into a veritable gallop, the essential elements of the genre are soon assembled into a, to mix the metaphors, well-earned avalanche. Why didn’t I just say stampede, hm? No.

A little hard to place in the homestead: maybe equal parts garage and bedroom. It features a bit of the grit and pulp of either.

Full of texture and heart in a way that resonates with my cultural conditioning, the track reverberates in the manner only matter can seem to muster. By which, to add to the confusion, I mean energy condensed to a relatively slow vibration. But, fortunately, its output is one within the audible range of our lowly species, the decline of which the song itself laments and celebrates in equal measure.

When it pours from the speakers there is a comforting nuance to the noise, the distinction a product of tens of thousands of hours you and I have spent consuming similar external stimuli. And within all that experience, narrowing and selecting, “Dead” is plotted within the very narrow percentage of what I arbitrarily consider to be Good. Credulously, gullibly, naïvely I take it to be an earnest testament. And if it isn’t, so what?

TRACK | Banned Books – Fuselage

5/5 golden merles

“Fuselage” is Banned Books stunning opener from their 2016 self-titled LP. Full of stars and false starts, the track asks: What’s the worst thing that could happen? Then later addresses the picking up and patching over.

Its movement is staggered like an unpaved route navigating over mountainous terrain. The path is guided by fractals of drums and the coursing, world-on-a-wire guitar channels.

There’s a great deal of vacillating, variance to elevation, and the track is no stranger to intermittent silences. This has its own internal logic or natural tectonics, and maintains a balance that feels both original and jarring.

Each jagged and convulsive element is intricately plotted and administered by familiar, well produced instrumentation. Strong work from Philadelphia: Pop, Rock, Noise, with experiments to structure and pacing.