Ears: Blushing – Tether EP Review [2017]

Blushing
Tether EP
Released 1/13/2017
self-released (weareblushing.bandcamp.com)

Shortly after the demise of beloved Ann Arbor shoegazers Pity Sex this past fall, it’s great to see more bands pick up the slightly-aggro yet chill ethereal influences of their take on dream-pop, and certainly Austin, TX’s Blushing has graduated at the head of its class on its inaugural EP release on their own dime, through bandcamp.

The first cut on the EP(and title track), Tether fires on all cylinders. Gauzy shimmering guitars from Michelle Soto and Noe Carmona lead into an anthemic earworm of a chorus, describing a rollercoaster of a relationship and it’s dizzying highs brought into such words as, “can we escape forever/growing up fast together/can we erase the past/forgetting it never lasts”. Following that, is a metallic bridge into dreamy goodness to close out the track.

“Why Can’t We?” follows up the raging first track and gives an aesthetic impression of the early years of Lush throughout the early 1990s with lead vocalist and bassist Christina Carmona sharing vocals with guitarist Michelle Soto throughout much of the track.

“Mess”, the third selection on the EP is the lengthiest track on it, but this is far from a negative mark on the song at all as it blisses its way through six minutes at an unexpected blistering pace, where the band really finds a groove within the dreampop gaze and jams its way through the entire track, swimming in such a way that evokes classic 4AD dream-rockers Cocteau Twins.

Closing cut “Protect You” begins with a brooding bassline from Michelle Soto, assisted with pounding drums from Jake Soto and wavy guitars from Soto and Carmona and leads into easily the heaviest shoegaze cut on the album, closing out the bliss of a relationship pictured in the title track, with the lovers in question splitting due to one leaving the other to move long-distance, in this track that echoes Siamese Dream to a point where you’d swear Flood was manning the boards on this release. Ending the EP with the heartbreaking line, “you gave it all just to leave here/I had no choice, but to stay”.

Blushing, not only has made a mark within their local Texas scene with such a great early release that shows only hope for the future of this great group of southern shoegazers keeping Austin weird one day at a time. Here’s hoping this release is only the earliest sign that 2017 will be another great year for music.

You can support the band’s self-released EP by going to their bandcamp page which I’ve linked below, where you can rep their music in your preferable aesthetic: CD, Cassette Tape or MP3. FULL DISCLOSURE: I purchased the cassette and can remark that the packaging on the release is top-notch, with a bubblegum Pink cassette tape and clamshell packaging that echoes a classy book on tape or an old VHS box. I’d recommend the tape based on quality and aesthetic alone, but any choice is certainly good for an EP of this caliber.

RIYL: Pity Sex, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Ride, early Pains of Being Pure at Heart
weareblushing.bandcamp.com – support the band and their music

Ears: AndroidSpace – Beautiful Mistakes

AndroidSpace
Beautiful Mistakes
Already Dead Records/Tapes
7/26/2016

One of the latest bands to sign to Brooklyn/Kalamazoo/Chicago based label Already Dead Records & Tapes is an unusual duo out of New Jersey known as AndroidSpace.

Combining elements of post-punk, space rock, ethereal shoegaze, electronic music and just a pinch of left-field hip-hop, the duo comprising of Serske16 and Fillmore Castro make a very promising first statement on their initial full-length, Beautiful Mistakes.

Starting out the album with the noisy intro ‘The Arrival’ and seguing into the following track ‘Atmosphere’ sets an industrial tone at the beginning of the album, with pounding drums and sinister-sounding synths beneath the drum machine, with the addition of disorienting echo-assisted vocals, that remind the listener “Don’t be surprised/We’re just like you” as the duo get spacey.

‘Back in Notes’ takes a different direction, by applying a beat that would work perfectly in a dark hip-hop setting and adds some distorted guitar to it, giving the track a hypnotic effect. This key track describes a situation where someone positively recounts a current, long-lasting relationship and how they got there in seemingly no time, opining that “some time has passed/now it’s the morning/and you don’t know how to feel/but it’s alright/cause without warning/you’re in love for fifteen years/no matter how up or down/no matter how much we’ve lost and found/I believe you’ve made me the man I am/and for that I’ll continue to explore with you”.

First single ‘Augmented’ keeps the pace going with a steady beat and a bassline reminiscent of Peter Hook’s noodling, with an infectious refrain of “stop going to bed” as a chorus, with a guitar/breakbeat solo in the middle.

Tracks such as ‘The Near Future’ and ‘Jamage Voltron’ continue to close out the first half of the record keeping with the trend of applying hip-hop beats and echoing vocals to distorted guitars and heavy synths.

The second half begins with ‘Division’ and continues with the great ballad and key track ‘Before We Go’, which utilizes a classic airy drum beat and remorseful lyrics about watching all of your friends die and thinking of what to do, what you could have done before they untimely passed. The lyricism of AndroidSpace comes out in spades on this track, with the descriptive lines telling a warning to make peace with your loved ones before they’re gone for good.

Following track ‘Incinerator’ begins with a guitar/bass intro reminiscent of the classic 4AD sound and keeps the pace up until the album’s second ballad, ‘Retrieve Our Bones’, which is the standout track of the album by far. Combining elements from bands as far and wide as HUM to The Big Pink for this track with it’s spiraling guitars, booming synths and the , makes for a spacey emo-rock gem.
“It’s the sensation inside/it always makes me surprised/we’ll always look to the sky/while I reflect in your eyes.” The effect of the duo sharing vocals on the last word of each line and dueling on the chorus also gives it a very unique feel.

‘The Illusions’ takes the album back into a heavy, industrial direction, keeping with the muffled echoing vocals and a plodding drum beat that continues onto a series of tracks that combine more of the duo’s prowess at creating beats that would not only work perfectly on a hip-hop mixtape but also gel perfectly with guitar and synthesizers in ‘The Key To Truth’ and ‘The Milky Way’

Closing tracks ‘Eye’ and ‘DP-3’ are nothing but ear-piercing noise to close out the album on a high note, as it began with a rather easygoing push into the group’s mix of industrial, new wave, witch house, post-punk, hip-hop and space rock and locks it back up with a shove into harsh enjoyable noise.

Groups such as AndroidSpace don’t come around often, mixing together genres that on paper would not seem to go as well in pairs, but somehow manage to make the whole thing work over the course of an hour and nineteen tracks. Not only is this a promising recording from the Jersey duo, but it shows that not only do they have room to grow within their sound, being the definers of this sound, there’s limitless possibilities of where they can go from here on out. As someone who always needs more music to stargaze to on my vacations back to my sleepy hometown, I’ll be rocking Beautiful Mistake and looking forward to what AndroidSpace brings us in the near future.

On July 26th, Already Dead Records released a cassette of Beautiful Mistake which I have not yet received, so I can’t make a judgement call on the tape’s aesthetic in the meantime, but knowing the quality of AD’s materials in the past, I know to trust that they can provide a quality analog product. Watch this space for a quick review of the tape when I receive it.

Support AndroidSpace (and the good people at Already Dead Records & Tapes):
http://www.facebook.com/androidspacemusic
https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/album/ad208-androidspace-beautiful-mistakes

Ears: Tracers – Jealousy [2015-2016]

Tracers
Jealousy
Self-Released 2015
Hot Vodka Records 2016
7/16/2016

Louisville, KY may not seem like an epicenter for experimental alternative rock to the untrained eye, but to the average indie music fan it’s the birthplace of post-rock as we all know it. Starting with the amazing noise group Squirrel Bait back in the early 1980s, whose members would break off to a handful of them forming the legendary Slint and later formed groups such as Tortoise, setting the stage for the formative genre as the 1990s rolled on.

Now, Louisville’s veteran musicians are inspiring a new school of instrumental rock acts, one of which, Tracers, embraces a style that combines 2000s emo, math rock and indie rock all into one, especially on their initial EP, Jealousy, self-released last year, but is now seeing a small Casssette run by indie tape label Hot Vodka.

Starting off with a quick bang in ‘Grow Up, Join The Party’, a one-minute track that begins with some light strumming and then jamming into a riff-heavy chorus, leading the charge into the second track, ‘Sounds Like Terror Squad’, which manages to start off light in the same direction as the first cut, but then begins to branch out into a spacier direction with plenty of the herky-jerky methods found in math rock, the band ever teasing the listener with four fake-out endings to close the track and the A Side of the EP.

Side B begins with the EP’s catchiest song by far, key track ‘Heavily Domesticated’. Combining the spazzy ethics of math rock experimentation and then tying it up with some crunchy riffs after the fast picking to get stuck in your head easily. The metal-style breakdown at the end of the track also highlights the band’s jump from a sound that would be more reminiscent of 00s Emo into more of a Hardcore bent, yet still channeling that era of underground music.

The ending track, ‘Lakehouse (Us and how we got this way)’, closes the EP with a more experimental progressive track that takes some ambient roads alongside the impressive riffing throughout the cut, serving as a similar pair to the A-Side’s catchy quick track followed by a more experimental spacey cut.

Jealousy only times out at a little over 10 minutes, but by the end of the EP you’ll be asking for more from the gang of four musicians and given the band’s social media presence, it sounds as if more is coming down the pike from Tracers, which hopefully is the case.

As for the cassette release by Hot Vodka, if you find yourself enjoying these four math rock jams, you would have to check out the cassette release as well, to support a great creative cassette label as well as the band itself. The cassette splits up the EP into two-track sides and it comes in your choice of a black cassette with white paint splatter or a translucent green cassette with white paint splatter.

I went with the green cassette and the presentation is great, giving it an outer space slime feel. As well as the cassette’s Asteroids-themed label, which not only fits the band’s spacey style but also makes for a great reference for a retro gamer such as myself.

Louisville continues to keep creating some of the best in loud, experiemental rock and hopefully Tracers will continue their output to be part of that great class of musicians.

To show some love towards Tracers (and Hot Vodka Records), peep the links below:
https://tracersky.bandcamp.com/
iseetracers.com
http://hotvodkarecords.storenvy.com/products/16648356-tracers-jealousy

Ears: Bob Mould -Patch The Sky

Bob Mould
Patch The Sky
Merge Records
3/25/16

Sometimes the worst situations that arise in an artist’s life can help to create a some of their most defining work – Bob Mould joins that club in his most recent release for Merge Records.

Released as the third in what Mould describes as a “trilogy”, Patch the Sky follows 2014’s Beauty and Ruin and 2012’s solo comeback, Silver Age. What all three albums have in common is not in thematic elements, but rather in the blissful noise pop fans and followers of Bob’s work either in his solo work, or his time in Husker Du and Sugar.

The album begins with the slow-burn single Voices in my Head, a track that blurs the line between noise and folk, as Mould describes what happens when one sits alone with their thoughts, which for many can be the most frightening endeavor imaginable. “I decide to listen to the voices in my head/strange hallucinations I avoid/the people and the places/the living and the dead/how can I find some truth within the noise”, Mould opines.

If there’s an outlier on Patch The Sky, Voices is it, recalling Mould’s very first solo LP Workbook, but as the record continues the speed dials up and the noise pierces through any of the folk-twinged sound of the opening track.

Follow-up rager The End of Things describes an apocalyptic scenario between a couple, surviving as their world self-destructs and remembering all of what they did in the past. “We used to be so good together/where did everything go wrong/we had fancy seats in heaven/and a beautiful home downtown”.

The themes of Patch the Sky don’t see a whole lot of daylight from start to finish; staying mostly in the basement, but the heavy noisy sound remains, even during anthemic ballads such as Hold On.

You Say You best resembles a Sugar track from Bob’s past, keeping a melodic noise-pop feel despite the track’s themes of a relationship suffering from double talk and uncertainty. “You say you want it now, you/but you only want it now and then”, Mould seethes. The darkness continues on the album after the halfway mark, with the bouncy loud track Pray For Rain and slower cut Lucifer and God.

Daddy’s Favorite is a standout cut on the album, focusing on Mould’s struggles with his father regarding his upbringing and his own coming out in the 1990s, putting a strain on the family momentarily before patching things up thereafter. Mould lost his father fairly recently, and to cover that by eulogizing this moment in his past in one of the more distorted tracks on Patch The Sky is an honor.

Hands are Tied and Losing Time are the closest you’ll get to New Day Rising-era Husker Du tracks on Patch The Sky, clocking in at not even two minutes and showcasing Bob, Jason and Jon at their punk/thrash strengths. Black Confetti follows it, with a wall of noise that best resembles a combination of power pop and shoegaze as Bob’s vocals are buried deep beneath the noise.

Closer Monument wraps up the album by taking a cool-off lap and returning to the same pace as opener Voices in my Head as Mould gets very introspective about his own struggles with depression over the course of his life, building inner walls and the last few years of losses he’s experienced. “I try to be happy every day/but my black heart, it burns”.

For a closing chapter to this “trilogy” of Mould’s albums, Patch The Sky is just as strong if not a pinch stronger than 2012’s Silver Age by its own brutal honesty through the lyrics within the album. The songs aren’t as fast paced this time around, but the songs are just as catchy. Mould shows off that he’s not willing to go quietly from his place as one of guitar rock’s greatest players alongside excellent noodling by Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster’s manic but prepared drumming.

Three indie rock vets showing that age is more than just a number, it shows experience that pays off in loud, noisy, catchy dividends.