PREMIERE: The Craters - I Was Around

Laura Kerry

Wes Kaplan has a knack for naming. A while back, the Boston native chose “The Craters” as his moniker, and his last EP, Kids Can Tell, evokes a youthful reveling even before the first few sunny guitar notes chime in. His newest album on Designer Medium Records, American English, continues the pattern, eliciting a feeling of balance between thoughtful consideration and a hint of punk dissent.

Both features are present in The Craters’ newest single off of American English, “I Was Around.” A mixture of The Beach Boys, Animal Collective, and garage rock, the song builds around lo-fi guitars, a steady beat, and a catchy melody. The song is mostly peppy and graspable—with a good dose of pop—but it also has darker, more complicated undertones, marked by unexpected intervals in the guitar, interesting phrasings, and the quickly descending vocals that don’t offer up the lyrics easily until the echoing refrain that gives the track its title. “I Was Around” also moves with a tension formed around its tightly repetitive structure, slowly escalating into an instrumental release towards the end. It’s a satisfying hint of what’s to come in early April.

VIDEO PREMIERE: Sheen Marina - Coda Arms

Kelly Kirwan

Sheen Marina have fashioned their own Wonder Emporium with their latest single, "Coda Arms," and its corresponding video created/directed by Kohar Minassian. It's a trippy display of knick-knacks superimposed over translucent backgrounds, whose effects teeter between x-ray and neon-thermal vision. Miniature figurines are the forefront, as palm trees, swirling patterns, and even reptilian close-ups act as their canvas. There are tinfoil-twisted astronauts with a single bloodshot eye connecting neck to shoulders, and tiny statues of tongue-lagging dogs drifting happily across the screen.

In a word, it's weird. In another word, it's enrapturing. There's something in Sheen Marina's sound and hallucinogenic logic that keeps you at ease, as if "Coda Arms" were the guide-posts that staved off a bad trip. The Brooklyn four-piece has a mix of surf rock and slight psych-punk influences, which come together and form an unexpected sound—it's jazzy and lo-fi, with an inviting voice pulsating somewhere beneath the melody.

The song starts off dreamy enough before breaking into a semi-familiar rock structure (but not for long). Sheen Marina flutters between quick lapses into staccato drumming, twisting guitar riffs, and then tapers off into an eerie, warbled pitch you would expect to hear while spotting a UFO. It plays like a pinball machine, your attention in a constant state of flux, but still soothed by the game. It's to be expected from a band that's "in love with everything," and whose style shows it. "Coda Arms" also doubles as their EP title, a trifecta of the uncanny an intriguing—an Emporium worth the ticket purchase.

REVIEW: The Walters - Young Men

Raquel Dalarossa

In early December, amid names like Adele, Justin Bieber, and Coldplay, The Walters found themselves yo-yoing comfortably up and down Spotify’s “Global Viral 50” chart. Their song “I Love You So,” the opener to the relatively nascent band’s first EP, was clearly making the rounds not just within the Chicagoans’ local circuit, but worldwide. The group’s social media pages corroborate this small-scale phenomenon: their Facebook brims with fan shout-outs spanning across the US and from France to New Zealand.

And yet, the self-described “cardigan rock” five-piece, formed just a little over a year ago, haven’t even been signed to a label yet, which seems like an inexcusable oversight in this day and age. There’s unquestionably something special about these guys, and with the recent release of their second EP, Young Men, this is a ripe time to dig into what the hype is all about.

Right off the bat, The Walters exude an element of kitsch with a sly wink, from the band’s name to the latest EP’s cover art (featuring a retro typeface and each of the members sporting crisp, white turtlenecks). Ostensibly, much of their actual music is also angled at nostalgia—sweet melodies recall ‘60s pop rock, infused with a penchant for vocal harmonies and a surfiness that have led to more than one Beach Boys comparison.

Indie bands with this type of sound really seem to have multiplied beyond their usual numbers in recent months, but The Walters stand out for their smart song and lyric writing. The seven-track EP’s third song, “Sweet Leaf,” is a solid example of the band’s style and strengths: it’s a short but immensely catchy tune, with a sunny guitar riff that belies its honest words about unrequited love. 

Even more vintage leaning is the doo-woppy “I Haven’t Been True,” which turns the traditionally saccharine genre sideways with lyrics like “I wanted you but I just couldn’t stay” and “It’s hard to love someone / When you know that we are far too young.” Their lyrical content achieves a quality that is often elusive: effortless sincerity, which makes them not just easy to listen to, but easy to relate to.

Young Men closes with two particularly sweet ballads, “Cottage Roads” and “Autumn Leaves.” These could easily have turned out to be a couple of throwaways, but they’re tightly crafted with interesting, warm melodies and softly overlapping vocals. It’s thoughtful, yet buoyed by undeniable catchiness. Though these guys may not take themselves too seriously, their music easily convinces us to do so—coupled with their proven viral capabilities (strong resume material for any millennial), there's no doubt a well-deserved big break is headed their way.

REVIEW: Triathalon - Nothing Bothers Me

Raquel Dalarossa

Though it is a coastal town, Savannah, GA, with all its antebellum charm and cobblestoned roads, is certainly not your average breeding ground for surf pop. But in the context of this witchy city, Triathalon’s music makes perfect sense; sun and surf are combined with blues and soul, and a healthy dose of trippy jams round out the sound. The cover art for the Georgian’s sophomore release, Nothing Bothers Me, depicts the record’s contents rather accurately: bright, watery blue is undercut by a shadowy dark, like a close-up of a deep, murky sea.

At first listen, Triathalon’s music sounds like those glistening crests of placid ocean waves, reminiscent of acts like Real Estate or Mac Demarco. Watery guitars shimmer over easy, upbeat melodies in tracks like “Ways” and “Nothing Bothers Me,” but those quickly prove themselves to be more or less outliers. The opening song “Mellow Moves” and the album’s first single “Slip’n” give a better representation of what Triathalon are capable of, with both of them hovering around the seven-minute mark and featuring slow, simmering moments interspersed between twitchy, wobbly jams. “Slip’n” in particular features the kind of sinister touches that gives the band’s music an intriguing edge, like the inhuman, harmonizing vocals in the intro that bring a creepy lullaby to mind, and a darkly-tinged chord progression throughout.

Mid-album highlight “Chill Out” is a strong showing of how well Triathalon balance these tonal elements. A pronounced, ominous bass line is juxtaposed against singer Adam Intrator’s breathy falsetto, while a discordant guitar languidly jangles along. “I’ve been dreaming of you,” sings Intrator, but it’s difficult to discern whether these dreams constitute fantasy or nightmare. And in fact, the entire narrative of the album follows a protagonist who goes from being captivated to practically being held captive. Early on in the track list, we get the lovesick ballad “It’s You,” in which Intrator confesses that “Now it’s getting hard to be alone without my babe / So help me out, I’m dying here, I need your embrace.” By the time we reach “Slip’n,” we hear him practically fleeing from the former object of his affection, desperately singing “She’s in my head, she knows / It’s seeping in, I’m broke.”

Even their instrumental numbers point to a shift in the mood as the record plays. The second track “Fantasy Jam” gives us an inviting guitar riff where notes scale upwards and hit sparkly peaks, where further down the road we get “Step Into the Dark,” with it’s ever so slightly menacing turns in melody.

Happily, the last two songs on the album provide some sleepy respite, with Intrator even singing “Feeling better now / I forgot what I was sad about.” It’s a strange and sudden turn-around, which aids in the album’s overall Twilight Zone-y effect. In an indie landscape that’s rather saturated with surfy sounds, the quietly subversive quality of this record feels clever and well done. All told, Nothing Bothers Me wouldn’t be entirely out of place on a beach trip, but don’t be surprised if a few bad omens turn up along the way.

REVIEW: Sandy's - Prom

Raquel Dalarossa

There's something especially romantic about this time of year. As summer bleeds into autumn, the days seem to dim into a balmy, extended dusk—everything feels warm and intimate. Many have tried to capture this sentiment but it's a tricky, almost ineffable thing, much more difficult to translate than the pure bliss of summer itself. The end-of-summer ditty, when aptly accomplished, has the potential to be downright stunning, and Sandy's Prom EP is comprised of five tunes that are just that.

Sandy's is the "psych pop surf" project of California's Alexi Glickman, previously of Santa Cruz's acclaimed but very short-lived Botticellis. Following the band's unexpected breakup, Glickman spent some time touring and honing his craft as a solo songwriter before dropping Sandy's debut, Fourth Dementia, last summer. The record garnered heavy praise for mixing complex, sunny arrangements with a rather dark melancholia—the product of uncertain and troubled times for Glickman. Over a year later, Prom, in comparison, offers a slightly more stripped-down aesthetic, though it retains the vintage charm that made Fourth Dementia so likable. 

“Charming,” in fact, might be the ideal word for all five tunes contained in this EP. From the moment that opening track “Prom Song” blips into focus, we feel awash in languid coziness, indeed much like the feeling of swaying gently in the arms of a special sweetheart. It’s one of the loveliest instrumentals I’ve personally heard in a while, and perfectly captures a certain starry-eyed, though vaguely wistful kind of contentment. “Consolidated Identity” continues in this line of feeling, pairing lilting, delay-heavy guitar riffs with woeful vignettes like “Smile at you in passing.” The next track, “Slumber Room,” highlights Glickman’s vocal abilities with overlapping harmonies that call Fleet Foxes to mind, while “Elliott’s Etude” opens the EP’s second side with more dulcet instrumentals. “We Can Pretend” is the natural closer, a soft farewell that feels like the kind of tune you’d enjoy from the backseat of a car driving into the sunset.

Together the five songs form the perfect complement to the closing of another summer, and happily hint at closure of another kind for Glickman. “Gone are the bad days,” he says, as he “waits for a new friend” (“Consolidated Identity”). With Prom, we can quietly relish the wait along with him.