No Knuckle’s “HALO” is richly textured, guttural Oregonian rock n’ roll and proto-punk. The track is a record of loss and lament, processed with the much escalating style that warrants your attention. It is equal parts sharp, wrought and fraying over the four primary phases of amorphous hooks, all combining in elaborate invention.
The subject is an examination of the death and decline of those in your immediate periphery, of family, both lost and those left sharing in the loss. It is processing grief and making a difficult event into a beautiful record of the occurrence, an act that reconfigures its presence in your life. Our lives are made up of such moments: some recollected in fixation, while all the others obliviate, the artistry allowing for reframing.
The repetition of the chorus is earned, after digging into the details: your brothers wayward gaze, the apparent untethered presence of the recently departed. There’s a great weighting to the variations and their sequence before and after in the differing methods of narration. It is valuable to have this darkness told and healthier than the disassociation and derealization we mostly pass through these passages under the veil of. And, regardless of all that, it rocks. Digital’s $3, Vinyl is out now on LA’s Tomothy Records.
Plainly & Painfully 