PREMIERE: Seldom Family - Early Fascination

Seldom Family's latest single, "Early Fascination," is a transportive tune. Couched in the musical language of a few decades past (it's hard not to want to append "-wave" somewhere in its description), it carries a sense of somewhat directionless nostalgia that makes it feel both immediately familiar and a bit wistful. The song is certainly lamenting something—what that is probably depends on the listener's interpretation.

It's reminiscent of Turnover's sound on last year's Peripheral Vision—smoothly textured, awash in dreamy guitars, and yet brimming with emotion. "Early Fascination" is a surprisingly powerful track, and, coming so swiftly on the heels of Seldom Family's self-titled debut, hopefully one that heralds a prolific future for the band.

REVIEW: Boy Harsher - Yr Body is Nothing

Laura Kerry

It’s no surprise that, according to an interview from last year, the personal and musical relationship that comprises Boy Harsher began with a church/warehouse space and the song “Bizarre Love Triangle.” Back in Savannah, Georgia, where the duo lived and went to film school before moving up to Northampton, Massachusetts, Jae Matthews had an aha moment watching Gus Muller dancing to New Order, and she began to woo him by sending him her prose writing, which he set to music, thus creating their first project together, Teen Dreamz.

Now, an EP and a brand new full-length later, Boy Harsher has perfected the formula whose seeds lie in that revelatory moment in Savannah. On Yr Body Is Nothing, they mix post-industrial warehouses with the dry pulse of ‘80s new wave, creating synth-driven music that infuses its dark, creeping tone with an invitation to move. The duo resembles the band that is central to its mythology, New Order, in both sound and tone—the way it couches songs about emotional states (primarily overwhelming anxiety) in unexpectedly danceable tunes.

Throughout Yr Body Is Nothing, Boy Harsher flickers back and forth between the immediacy of those emotional states and simple numbness. That plays out in the vocals, which are sometimes distant and monotone (“Cry Fest”), and at other times close and despairing (“Last Days”), or even soulful (“Save Me”). In some songs, including the title track, they start out far away but come into focus, escalating the sense of anxiety as it continues. While build-ups in songs typically lead to some sort of release, here they serve to increase the tension, making the unease more palpable. When “Suitor” escalates, it does so in the form of a frenetic bass and a cacophony of voices, including deep breaths; when the beat “drops” after this and structure returns, the dance beat sounds ominous.

On an album full of songs with titles such as “Save Me” and “Cry Fest,” it doesn’t come as too much of a shock that one of the most danceable tunes is called “Morphine.” With a jittery bass line, deep, pulsing beat, and bright organ synth, the instrumentals lead to one of the few real hooks, “She’s like morphine on my mind / She’s like morphine all the time.” More than this refrain, though, another line stands out among the anguished whisper of vocals: "I want to make it hurt more / I want to make you dance." This seems to get to the heart of the album, suggesting that pain and fear and anxiety can push you towards the kinds of music that make you bob your head or move your hips, and that bobbing your head or moving your hips can create a kind of welcome numbness. Through the drone of bass, beat loops, and synths on “Morphine,” “Big Bad John,” and “A Realness,” among other tracks, it’s possible to achieve a moment of catharsis.

PREMIERE: Remote Places - Over My Head

Kelly Kirwan

Justin Geller has had a few renaissances over the span of his career. His band, Pink Skull, metamorphosed from low-key electronica to psych-inspired krautrock, and then ultimately leveled out along a branch of “druggy analog” to produce that mind-altering experience with a modern-day stitch. A steeping stone in his solo career came in the form of a friend’s request to add a song to the fractured-family drama The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, released in 2013. Now, three years later, DJ, producer, and genre cut-and-paster Geller has released a new EP, Nights and Weekends, under his independent moniker, Remote Places. It has a heavy backwards glance to the '80s, particularly on the single “Over my Head”— with its deep, far-off vocals acting as the rudder amidst swirling rock riffs and cameos of intergalactic synth. 

It’s a song that could’ve been superimposed over scenes of Duckie in the 1986 Hughes classic Pretty in Pink—the shafted suitor that could never break free of the friend zone. “Your heart wasn't ready / But it was ready enough for someone else,” even vocals observe between resonating guitar notes, “All of the times I waited on you ... All of the times you strung me along.” It’s a banger and an open, love-scorned letter that still keeps its cool. Tightly arranged with just the right amount of vintage inspiration, “Over My Head” is enough to bring back the flock of seagulls haircut and pass it off as suave, while giving the cast-aside their well-deserved limelight.

PREMIERE: Ghost Camp - Ganymede

Kelly Kirwan

Chances are, the name “Ghost Camp” will trigger a childhood memory—a soft book cover perhaps, with a dripping green font signaling R.L. Stine's trademark series, Goosebumps, haunting middle school children near and far. Only now it’s become a double entendre, serving as the letterhead for New Brunswick-based foursome whose latest single, "Ganymede," previews their sophomore album.

Ghost Camp has broken down their sonic taxonomy as a brand of witch-punk, shoegaze, and new-wave, and "Ganymede" serves as a link among all three genres. It opens with an extraterrestrial synth, as if it were a radio signal sent into space from a spiraling USS Enterprise. Then the familiar countdown of clacking drumsticks comes in, as the beat transitions into a more earthly rock blend pulsating under deadpan vocals. It has a late-'80s, early-'90s sense of deja vu throughout.

Quickly, we hear a pattern emerge in the lyrics—they’re sharply written but with staggered, similar-sounding syllables, as if Ghost Camp were reciting a straight-faced incantation—an appeal to our galaxy and how our fragile sense of identity fits within it. (Ganymede is Jupiter’s largest moon). "Ganymede"’s chorus clues us into Ghost Camp’s grand design, "The light I used to see / Is coming up from underneath / And who I used to be / Is washed into the sea." It's a repeated stanza which mimics a planetary orbit—habitually occurring, but each time signaling a new stage.

REVIEW: Flasher - Flasher EP

Raquel Dalarossa

Washington, DC’s Flasher describe their self-titled debut as a soundtrack to “what's happened to the city before and since.” Listening through the seven-track EP, the intention comes across pretty clearly. Flasher’s high-octane, new-wave sound captures pulsing urban energy perfectly, and the band’s lyrics, in aptly-named songs like “Tense” and “Throw It Away,” abound with anxiety. The resulting product is an often chaotic, though satisfying punk release that sonically dwells on darker aspects of modern life like feelings of meaninglessness, frustration, and despair, while sounding hopeful and empowering at the same time. 

Flasher is comprised of bandmates Taylor Mulitz and Emma Baker, on guitar and drums respectively, who are both also members of the post-punk outfit Young Trynas. In Flasher, they’re joined by bassist Daniel Saperstein, pulled over from the bands Bless and Trouble. The newly-formed trio came together out of a desire to depart from each of their established sounds, though they clearly bring their collective experience and new wave inclinations to the fold. It’s easy to recognize a loose connection between Young Trynas and Flasher, for example, but certain nuances make them two completely different animals; while a Young Trynas song thrashes about with brash guitar riffs, Flasher’s sound is far more rhythmic and smooth.

This is particularly evident on tracks like “Make Out,” where we get a catchy guitar riff and even pace. Meanwhile, final track “Destroy” smacks of The Cure, with a melodic, bright tune. There’s a loose and liberated feel to the EP that seems a product of how this group came together. The trio are all good friends—it turns out Mulitz and Baker are actually roommates—and so Flasher feels unrestrained, as though they are producing music as much for themselves, and each other, as they are for any sort of wider audience. It all feels satisfyingly unaffected. 

“Tense" is an effortless standout, beginning with a distorted bass line before a synth riff, which rings a little of Joy Division’s “Isolation,” smooths out the sound. Mulitz croons over the music while Saperstein accompanies with chants in the background. The co-vocalists meet with the line “Trying to reach through / Trying to get through.” The song gives the sense of standing amid an enormous crowd, yet you remain distant, safe and comfortable within your own head. It’s oddly soothing. Elsewhere, “Erase Myself” features delicate guitar plucking and subsequently soaring riffs that come off as invigorating, even optimistic, but Mulitz adds a dark angle with the lyric “I’ll erase myself / To release myself.”

Thoughtful lyricism paired with melodic solos, visceral instrumentation, and a very late-'70s/early-'80s lean give Flasher’s particular brand of punk a special air. With the band members tied to a number of other projects, it’s difficult to say whether we’ll be seeing more from this group, but for now their EP is a strong one-off that will hopefully lead to more releases.