PREMIERE: God Tiny - Revolution Run

Laura Kerry

Most of the band God Tiny plays guitar. Of the five members, three—Jeremy Kolker, Benjamin Lomei, and Peter Spengeman—combine the instrument with vocals. The remaining two, Maximillion Lubis and Jordan Smith, play drums and bass respectively.

Their latest single, “Revolution Run,” at points sounds like it contains at least three guitars. At first, though, it starts small with a jaunty and fuzzy strumming pattern that sounds like a garage-rock descendent of surf music. But the song soon reveals its occult leanings with lyrics like, “In the winds the stardust blooms / Death was mighty angry / But life was angry, too,” and just like God Tiny’s mystical rock predecessors such as Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and others, the band soon adopts the more driving tone of hard rock. Starting small, the chorus repeats, “If you look deep inside you / You can see a cosmos,” before exploding into noise. For the remainder of the song, vocals wail, drums smash, and guitars shriek. By the end of “Revolution Road,” the original strumming pattern is nowhere to be found.

Building and changing in the course of a single song, God Tiny make no guarantees about what’s to come on their new LP, The Space Inside Your Head, due out on May 26. If “Revolution Road” is any indication, though, it will certainly rock.

You can catch God Tiny's record release show at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn, 5/26 at 8 p.m. with Stuyedeyed, Ghost King, and Greasy Hearts.

REVIEW: Wae - Glimmer

Kelly Kirwan

Fuzzy reverb damn near drips from the speakers on Wae’s latest album, Glimmer. The seven-track EP glints with '70s nostalgia, reveling in hazy psychedelia that mingles easily with the band’s own experimental flair. At the heart of Wae is musician Caleb Moore, who’s carried the group through three metamorphoses before hitting its stride in this most recent roster. Spearheading bass is Beau Cole, with Dan Whitely tackling keys and Eric Rosario holding down the drums. Respectively, these musicians have graced other groups such as Lands & Peoples, Raindeer, Other Colors, and Shinji, making the rounds on the indie circuit before settling into this slinky quartet.

Their music sounds like the gentle ghost of psych-rock’s past, their chords appearing to us in slightly distorted waves like a heat haze in the near distance. In the words of their label, Friends Records, based in Baltimore, “These songs are stream of conscious [sic] diary entries: moods and moments that needed to be exploded, inspected and reformed.” Glimmer has the delicate touch its title may suggest, but it also isn’t afraid of a ragged edge. It’s a sultry, frayed, swerving piece of work that marks up its melodies with crinkling riffs and subtly warped vocals. Even when Glimmer slithers into sedated, introspective interludes, they never let their sound become too primly pretty—they add these opposing garnishes in just the right doses. 

Take "Shit Take II," a wry title that sets the tone for their album. Muffled, far-off vocals drift over the melody, which is marked by guitar plucking and a sort of wavering, languid strut. It’s mostly instrumental, with those reverberating strings and a touch of white noise seeping its way into the beat. It ends abruptly, cutting off at the two-minute mark to keep us from the moody trance that would have slowly engulfed us. Not bad for a so-called shit take. 

"Too Much" begins with a wash of something reminiscent of an '80s homecoming dance in a science-fiction movie. It’s a song to slow-dance to, likely as mist starts to waft into the gymnasium, to the tune of gleaming guitar strums and a start-and-stop interplay as the track nears its home stretch. "If You Wanna" features Rosario and his deliberate, sauntering percussion. The vocals are, in their signature style, unhurried and kept at a distance, as if we were eavesdropping through an air vent. Wobbly streams are vaguely audible in the background, reminiscent of radio-signal interference, as the melody sways onward. 

Glimmer has been compared to the stream of consciousness that’s often found in diary entries, but it’s more akin to a delightful fever dream. A slightly off-kilter landscape that shape shifts with every chord progression, and feels completely natural as we’re engulfed in its beat. These four absolutely click, and they’ve given us a chance to reverberate on their frequency.  We hope this new version of Wae is here to stay.

REVIEW: Holy Wave - Freaks of Nurture

Raquel Dalarossa

In 2008, two friends from El Paso, Texas embarked on a twelve-hour drive to Santa Monica, California to catch My Bloody Valentine on their mbv tour. The duo—Kyle Hager and Julian Ruiz—would go on to Austin from there, making an official move to what's arguably the music capital of the country. By 2011, with a couple of other additions, they had formed Holy Wave and released their first LP, Knife Hits. The road trip, though it may seem an inconsequential story, lends pretty key context to the band's specific sound: shoegazey surf-psych.

If it sounds like a messy kind of sub-sub-genre, their newest album, Freaks of Nurture, will quell those worries. Five years have given the band enough time to distill their modus operandi, and their third studio album is undoubtedly their strongest release yet. Perhaps it’s the product of extensive touring all around the states and overseas, or perhaps it’s something to do with filling out their lineup a little more—Joey Cook, Dustin Zozaya, and Ryan Fuson make up the rest of the five-piece. Whatever it was, the ten tracks present on Nurture are rather starkly more sophisticated and accessible than the songs found on their last full-length, Relax.

The band have always leaned pretty far into psych rock in the past, mixing the appropriate amount of organ into their sea of reverb, but on Nurture they’re offering a heavier dose of concise pop. On “Wendy Go Round,” they channel the insouciant but catchy dreaminess of The Kinks, while on “You Should Lie” they kick the tempo up and come out sounding more like Wavves. And though the band have previously been labeled a “garage” act, it’s clear they’re aiming for a more refined sound this time around. Take, for example, the track “Our Pigs,” which went from a scratchy, punky demo first heard on last year’s EP The Evil Has Landed Part II, to a much floatier psych track with guitars toned down and bass punched up.

Where vocals are involved, they nearly always follow the far-away, reverb-heavy pattern we typically associate with shoegaze, and the band show off their ability to fully embrace the hazy wall-of-sound approach on the centerpiece track “California Took My Bobby Away,” though it’s more Slowdive than My Bloody Valentine. A little further down the tracklist, “Sir Isaac Nukem” makes for another real highlight and is a deft combination of all of the band’s strengths, with its earworm of a melody, washed out vocals, and intermittent instrumental jamming. 

Though it’s by no means a marked change from Holy Wave’s previous releases, Freaks of Nurture certainly showcases a conscious effort at evolution, and it does so rather beautifully. Though shoegaze, surf rock, psych rock, and punk rock all make appearances, the tracks manage to be nuanced and, through and through, just plain enjoyable.

CONCERT COUNTDOWN: Summer Twins - Limbo

Kelly Kirwan

Summer Twins are easy listening. They play sunny dream pop that has the blunt edge of '50s and '60s garage rock, and is soothing without being sleepy—songbird vocals backed by the occasional soft kick. While they've enlisted extra hands to round out their sound (on bass, guitar, and the intermittent mellotron), at its core, Summer Twins is a sister act brought to us by Chelsea and Justine Brown. On their latest LP, Limbo, the sibling duo wrote the lyrics in their entirety and performed the brunt of the underlying melody (the element which comes first for them in the creative process).

The two recorded their second studio album in a somewhat seedy Sacramento area, with Chris Woodhouse acting as their in-house producer (his resume includes a collaboration with LA indie rock-god Ty Segall). Trekking between California's capital and their new Los Angeles abode, the Brown sisters created an LP that's West Coast through and through—its songs are painted in warm yellow and orange hues, where even the tints of grunge are laid-back in delivery. As a band, they've created the kind of Limbo you want to bide your time in, hovering between now and the era of Beach Boys and The Beatles.

The smooth shot of nostalgia that Summer Twins serves on their album is ever-present on the track "Our World". It's sultry and slow to unfold, evocative of old-school, early-'60s romance—swaying at a small-town dance, letterman jackets and talk of going steady. "I'll wait for you / And you will wait for me / Can't stand another night of sleeping alone / Let's put our belief into the unknown," the Brown sisters croon, and their sweet, forlorn delivery has that retro vibe of USO girls sending off the troops, bittersweet and hopeful all at once.

Then there's "Ouija," which has a more ominous tone, coupled with the Brown's high, lilting vocals (reminiscent of Dusty Springfield's 1968 single "Spooky"). It's a track that flirts with themes of dark magic and mysticism, slipping into winding guitar riffs typical of psych-rock and its affinity for pensive, bass-heavy interludes. The gentle cadence of the Browns' vocals has a hypnotic effect, conveying an uncertainty and restlessness over what's brewing beneath the surface: "Something's got to change / I feel it in my veins / Like a sunny sky turns into rain / Let it thunder, let it pour / Let it shake me to the core." It's uncanny and a tad kitschy, but a fast-acting ear-worm that's readily put on repeat.

Currently setting off on a cross-country tour, Summer Twins—and their latest project—are worthy of your radar. For one, their music is an absolute hit in Japan (seriously, with cover bands and all), and two, they've pulled off a genre that tends to be overdone without coming across as stale. They have a relaxing sound that never drifts into the background, proving a softer touch can have the stronger staying power. 

Summer Twins will be headlining ThrdCoast's first collaborative show with Dirges & Daydreams at Babycastles in New York City on Sunday, March 27, with fellow acts Cut Worms and Goldy. We hope to see you there!

REVIEW: Acid Dad - Let's Plan a Robbery

Laura Kerry

Acid Dad is the kind of band you can imagine drinking PBRs in a dingy basement, lighting something on fire, then waking up to go to a college calculus class the next morning. Still in school at NYU, Danny Gomez, Vaughn Hunt, and Kevin Walker found each other late at night in an East Williamsburg bar in 2014 and, with the recent addition of Sean Fahey, formed a band that straddles two genres: psych and punk, if they were played in a ramshackle garage.

The combination of their college enrollment, psych-punk, and garage rock might form the stereotypical “slacker” image in your mind, but Acid Dad is anything but that. Named by Oh My Rockness as New York’s third most hardworking band of 2015, they played 36 high-energy, head-banging shows last year and are slated to play about one show per day all around the country from now until the end of April, a task reserved for crazy hard workers or just plain crazies.

On their debut EP, Let’s Plan a Robbery, that kind of boundless energy manifests in Acid Dad’s songwriting. Though they embrace punk’s DIY ethic, the EP feels polished—at least in the sense that all the lo-fi fuzziness in it is perfectly balanced. And though most of their songs follow basic structures, the four tracks ebb in flow in subtler motion, a result of the painstaking process of breaking down songs to make sure each separate section, often very different, flowed. Not always recognizable, the verse-pre-chorus-chorus structure is often masked under another force more tangible throughout the EP: tension and release.

On the opener, “Don’t Get Taken,” a song that is equal parts fuzzy rock, jaunty guitar riffs, and punk rasp, the melody centers on one chord before letting loose at the end of each section, then building up into a pre-chorus refrain. The real release comes in a chorus that is just a more energetic extension of what preceded it; after repeating “Gotta get out,” singer Hunt yelps with urgency, “Get outta here now, my baby.” With the similarly uptempo and guitar hook–laden “Digger (Gotta Get That Money),” the chorus breaks up a driving, simple melody reminiscent of ‘70s punk, building to a suspended moment of quiet toward the end before heading in for the final release.

Elsewhere, it’s the chorus that’s in suspension. On the slower, dreamier “Shoot You Down,” the two-line chorus descends in three reverb-soaked chords, silencing the percussion to add quiet intensity to the final words, “I’m gonna have to shoot you down.” This, oddly enough for a softer song, is as aggressive as Acid Dad’s sentiments get in sentiment on the EP. Though audacious in tone and title—as you would expect from the punk side of their dual genre—the music has a playful edge. “Hey señorita / I don’t need ya / They gonna give me a raise,” they sing in “Digger.” And far from threatening, both “Don’t Get Taken” and “Fool’s Gold” are about getting out of bad situations (“Babe, don’t want to be in your game,” Hunt sings in the latter).

Despite its tame themes, their music still grabs you with force and shakes you, especially when played at a recommended high volume. With stubbornly catchy guitar hooks, deftly-crafted fuzzy songs, and an insane tour schedule, it seems that contrary to our imaginations, the only fires Acid Dad is lighting these days is in their own bellies (though I’m sure they’ll pick up a few PBRs along the way).