REVIEW: Wsabi Fox - Gushing

By Phillipe Roberts

In a three song suite appropriately titled Gushing, Wsabi Fox erupt with emotion without shame or restraint, and cut a wide swath across genres in the process. The strange brew of sounds mixed up by the band is hard to label and even harder to ignore. At times, it swoons with delicate psychedelic touches - a touch of dreamy strings over here, shimmering echoes and jazzy, gliding beats over there - while at others, particularly opening track “Yes Ma’am,” it seeks to pin your ears in place with jagged stabs of distorted prog rock riffing and dissonant baritone saxophone. Miraculously, it gels together wonderfully, sounding like the climactic final act in a well-rehearsed piece of absurdist theater. On Gushing, Wsabi Fox throw some serious weight around, enveloping you in a brutal stream-of-consciousness that rewards getting swept up in the current.

Wsabi Fox self-labeled the opening track “Yes Ma’am” as a “femme dom anthem.” Sure enough,  it wastes no time getting you under its control with squealing, no-wave saxophone blasts and a dizzying riff that tosses and turns like a heavy sea underneath it all. From there on out, it’s a funhouse of constantly warping textures - strings, horns, and transitional noise passages that keep you on your toes. And still that one riff keeps grinding on. The assault is relentless, but never exhausting. Vocalist Jennae Santos doesn’t take up much room on the track, floating in and out to deliver growls and ghostly wails; if anything, you get the sense that she’s rocking out hard as we are, lost in the gritty circular groove that feels like it could stretch on forever. 

Frankly, if the record continued on with more tracks in this vein, Santos’ compositional brilliance in the swinging grind mode of “Yes Ma’am” would no doubt carry Gushing to the top of your brooding bangers playlist. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your taste), that isn’t the case; Santos just has too many tricks up her sleeve. After drifting through the delayed guitar echoes with a freely spinning vocal intro, “Diabolical Hue” comes into focus with a psychedelic explosion of drums around the two minute mark. But rather than continue as is, it retreats into a stop-start back and forth between guitar and drums, a kind of math-rock interlude set against some sinister, cinematic strings. That interlude eventually returns in the opening of “Flamingo,” but for now, they close “Diabolical Hue” out with more seismic eruptions, bowing out on an emotional high. 

The swings in mood are violent yet compact; Wsabi Fox have the chops to craft those spacey, post-rock influenced atmospherics, but they prefer to use them as bait, signaling the all-clear as they ready another heavy prog blast of energy to knock you over the head with, like an inverted Godspeed You! Black Emperor with a little more swing. Surprisingly, final track “Flamingo” deviates the furthest from the formula they’ve set up, preferring to coast on that stuttering guitar flourish as strings swell and bloom around them. The whole thing seems calculated to give you goosebumps, pressure building at a constant rate before those soft pinprick noises become a deluge of sound which evaporates just in time for Santos to deliver a folk coda. Only one release in, Wsabi Fox have shown a marvelous knack for occupying many dimensions at once in their music. Gushing isn’t just the perfect title, but an accurate description of how tough it’ll be to keep this perfect open secret to yourself.

Guerilla Toss - Green Apple

Arc Iris - $GNMS

Ohmme - Peach

PREMIERE: The Washboard Abs - Lowlight Visions

Phillipe Roberts

Recorded during islands of relative calm as songwriter Clarke Sondermann cared for a partner in the wake of a stage IV cancer diagnosis, Lowlight Visions was never intended to be a document of grief or mourning. The thirteen-track collection became a kind of life raft, a way to float above the immense pain and preserve the deep love felt for his ailing partner. “The songs come from the intersection of tremendous love and tremendous fear,” he says, “and though the fear is very present, communicating the love was my intention.” The Washboard Abs set that tremendous love adrift in arrangements that, while never quite detaching themselves from a formula of twinkling, finger-picked guitars entangling gently over breakbeat drums, promote a quietly propulsive healing. Sondermann and co. process the uncertainty of illness by putting order to chaos—a form of ultra-harmonious musical housekeeping.

If there’s any criticism to be made of this particular coping mechanism on Lowlight Visions, it’s that Sondermann’s vision is perhaps too well realized to reveal any of the negative emotions bubbling beneath the surface without seriously digging into the lyrics. Put this album on in the background, allow the placid surroundings and ambient textures to swirl around you, and you’ll come away with a strong feeling of romantic nostalgia rather than a broken heart. However, this may be exactly what The Washboard Abs intended to create: an escapist fantasy from the very real pain that creates lyrics like “Can I play dumb / Or try forgetting / The fear of ending?” Though you may have to detach yourself from the beautiful surface to hear it, those moments of sheer emotional terror are well worth listening for.

But if one is to take the purely escapist route, The Washboard Abs’ cinematic, sentimental vision is more than enough to sweep you away. They’re masterful at creating cross-hatched guitar arpeggios peppered with melodic fragments and layering percussion around them in a race to fill the gaps. Certain tracks, like latecomer “Brittle Bones,” go the extra mile in their rhythmic free-for-all, ending up in a gently pulsating landscape not dissimilar to a weepier Stereolab or Tycho. Lest you accuse the Abs of simply piling on rhythmic flourishes, they even succeed at creating some impressively ghostly soundscapes on the haunting “Pareidolia.” For the most part, however, Lowlight Visions is a record concerned primarily with dreamy drift. The circular melodies they craft on tracks like highlight “Return to You” sound like they could go on forever, rotating endlessly in hypnotic bliss.

While Lowlight Visions may not immediately evoke the heart-wrenching loss that spurred The Washboard Abs to action, it can provide the same kind of shelter that it gave its creators. Lost in the chiming of guitars and the delicate mellotron, vibraphone, and synthesizer ornamentations adorning its brittle edges, you might find the sweet solace that’s been eluding you too.