REVIEW: Lingua Nada - Snuff

Raquel Dalarossa

Lingua Nada are a hard band to pin down. They’ve been described as everything and anything, from progressive pop to math rock, and their own Bandcamp page’s tags run the gamut from shoegaze to emo. It has to be impossible for a band to truly embody all these genres, right?

That’s one assumption that quickly goes out the window after a listen to the band’s full-length debut, Snuff. Indeed, despite the inclusion of just ten tracks, the material here covers a hell of a lot of ground. It’s an astonishingly well-integrated mishmash of sound, practically bursting at the seams with a live wire energy that drives the band’s ecstatic experimentation.

Though it’s formally considered their debut, it’s easy to tell that Snuff is no amateur release. For the four-piece—led by Adam Lenox Jr. on vocals and guitar (as well as on recording and production duties), with Michael Geyer on second guitar, Arvid Sobek on bass, and Valentin Tornow on percussion and trumpet—this has been a long time coming. Based in Leipzig, Germany, Lingua Nada has gained some traction in the European indie world, having spent the past two years touring rather relentlessly to support a couple of EP releases. Even as far back as 2014 the band were already recording together under the name “Goodbye Ally Airships,” though their only LP with that moniker exhibits more straight up emo and post-hardcore tendencies. It’s clear they’ve done a fair amount of maturing their sound since then.

Snuff deftly incorporates the band’s obvious love for hard-driving punk and noise-rock with lighter moments of shoegaze and pop-rock. Opening track “Svrf Party” pretty much gives you a taste of all of these pieces upfront, nearly causing auditory whiplash right out of the gate. With a penchant for near-operatic drama and frenzied, guitar-driven tempos recalling thrash metal, it can take a lot of energy just to listen to this stuff, but it’s always rewarding.

“A Netflix Original,” for example, starts off with a barrage on all your senses, but quickly evolves into math rock-leaning arpeggios, with string instruments and synths adorning a buildup to a joyous post-punk jam. Other highlights include “Cyanide Soda,” an almost danceable track with some of the catchiest riffs on the album, as well as “Shapeshifted,” at once moody, brooding, and soaring.

Lingua Nada's Snuff is a wild ride without a doubt, but it's one you won't regret taking. Just be sure to buckle up. 

PREMIERE: Backwards Dancer - October

Will Shenton

On their latest single, "October," Backwards Dancer channel a sound I haven't had the pleasure of indulging in for years. Combining elements of noise rock, post-hardcore, and grunge, the resulting track is a wall of distortion and punchy vocals that hover around the boiling point throughout.

"October" comes alongside Backwards Dancer's announcement of vinyl pre-orders for 2017's self-titled LP. It's an explosively raw addition to the record, introducing a somewhat more off-kilter sound that feels wild and unrestrained but also mature in its songwriting. We're looking forward to hearing more from these Worcester, Massachusetts-based rockers as they experiment.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Dove Lady - Ferbalicious

Phillipe Roberts

Jeremy Ray and Andrew Thawley, the duo at the helm of D.C. sensation Dove Lady, cruise through their twisted prog pop tunes with a miraculous ease for such a limitless, genre-snapping hysteria. Just flip through One, their latest release and the first to break away from their 26 EP game plan (one for each letter of the alphabet), and you’ll find screeching math rock riffery, beachy anthems, and charming instrumentals, all impeccably timed and compacted into one seriously heady trip of an EP.

And yet, gliding in at the tail end of the record, the free and fierce grooves of “Ferbalicious” still manage to take a running jump at you. With soothing waves of ambience crashing around a muscular, tightly wound breakbeat, the duo rockets into a krautrock dance number with a satisfying crunch that echoes vintage indie radicals Stereolab.

In the accompanying video, their left-field style is given quite a literal visual treatment from the get-go as Ray’s face swims superimposed in front of Thawley. We see Ray slumbering upstairs, his head wrapped in a crown of pulsating Christmas lights, until Thawley joins him, coiling himself in the wires and falling into a Matrix-like dream state where the two meditate in a field. Cut back-to-back with footage of the two, glittering with silver face paint and pounding out the grooves in a small room, it’s an appropriately mind boggling but lovely metaphor for the symbiotic relationship at the soul of their music.

REVIEW: Dove Lady - One

Laura Kerry

I remember the surprise I felt when I first learned that Washington, DC has a history of fostering an influential punk and hardcore scene. To me, the nation’s capital meant pristine monuments and the respectable act of governance (ha). It was thrilling to learn that under all that marble, people had been airing their feelings and making noise.

Andrew Thawley and Jeremy Ray live in DC, and their band, Dove Lady, shows signs of the post-hardcore scene from which it sprung. Their latest album, One—the first full-length after a series of alphabetized EPs, A, B, C, and D—begins with an explosive oscillation of fuzzy guitar. Drums come in, crashing wildly, and the vocals emerge as a monotone yelp. The start of the opener, “7777,” promises to deliver on the DC legacy. Soon, though, Dove Lady pulls back. “7777” morphs several times, changing from the harsh pulse of punk guitar to smoother, quieter modes and back again.

Punk is only one edge of Dove Lady’s experimental territory on One. Throughout the album, they transition from post-hardcore to jazz, and even to a moment of R&B smoothness on “Carl Salesman.” And when they do get loud, the duo never fully loses control. Rhythmic and tight all the way through, they only skirt the edges of chaos before dissolving into calm—a move that's as exciting as total mayhem. Dove Lady are masters of tension and release.

Such mood swings happen not only in the sound, but also in the lyrics. “In essence,” Dove Lady said in an interview with GoldFlakePaint, “One is about accepting and forgiving one’s self for all of life’s mistakes; it is a sonic representation of moving on from the past and into the present.” Naturally, that is a fraught process. The album reflects that in moments of anxiety: “I'm scared of the way that you might look at me If you hear what I’m thinking / I’m tired of uncertainty,” they sing on “What’s Wrong Roberta,” and “Sometimes I get so lonely and I don’t know” on “Carl Salesman.” For all of its musical trickery, One’s sentiments are delightfully earnest.

And Dove Lady is never more delightful and earnest than in the moments of catharsis that lend the album a feeling of simultaneous gravity and lightness. “It’s time / Won’t be long / ‘Til I’m comfortable,” they sing over a catchy guitar melody in the appropriately named “Uplifting Song.” At the end, the track reaches a satisfying release with the line, “It’ll all be ok.” And just as One begins with the roar of guitar, it ends with another loud statement. “Anything that I want / I can get if I try,” they sing on the closing track, “Boar Switch,” before the instruments and vocals swell, coming closer to spilling over into chaos than anywhere else on the album.

A product of their city but with a strong sense of their own sound, Dove Lady makes music how they want to.

PREMIERE: Tiergarten - Magnificent Desolation

Kelly Kirwan

Design, as a concept, plays heavily into Brooklyn’s post-hardcore outfit Tiergarten. Fresh on the scene with a new EP, we see the first reference to a greater blueprint in their title, Magnificent Desolation—a nod to astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s description of space as he stood on the moon. Then we move into their tracks, whose influences flutter between the angst of '90s-era, plaid-clad alternative musicians, early-2000s space-age pop, and resurgent punk rock.

“Architect” is an obvious opener title for a band who, down to their very name, pay close attention to our concrete surroundings and play with the negative space that surrounds them. But it’s a track with a more specific story than that would imply, indulging Tiergarten’s darker inclinations by focusing on the infamous Robert Durst (whose surname is stamped on various New York skyscrapers, and whose full name has caught public attention for a slew of suspicious murders and disappearances). "Architect" is marked by deep, ominous drumming and different intervals of quick-climbing guitar riffs, and frontman Alex von Klemper’s vocals are throaty and jaded throughout. “Decimation calls … Intrusion becomes a game,” he sings, slyly referencing the irony, perhaps, in how an architect can cause the lives around him to crumble.

"Paradigm" follows "Architect"’s lead with its foreboding tone. Guitars seem to stretch towards the precipice of our atmosphere, as the band crafts a full and potentially explosive sound. “I’m just always going to be this way,” von Klemper lightly delivers, and in brief moments, he even breaks from his trademark indifferent keel. The song ends in a flatline, as if Tiergarten’s members simultaneously unplugged, prolonging the high pitch of an unfinished note. They certainly have a punk vibe, but one that lingers beneath the surface, never reaching that familiar realm of expletives and confrontational shrieking.

Magnificent Desolation may have darker shades, but it’s not all doom and gloom. It’s enticing, a new structure of post-punk-psych (etc., etc.) for us to interact with—a mecca, if you will, just like the band’s namesake.