Thursday, January 12, 2012

#436 Milk Music - Beyond Living

There were two big themes in this year's indie/rock circle 2011 lists this year: reverby, watery, folky rock, and big blunt garagey rock. I'm much more into the latter. This is one of those.

In fact, this is downright grunge, straight outta Washington, full of fuzz, pumped to 11, complete with great little Pumpkinsey squeals, churning pre-New York chugging guitars, buzzy harmonics, offkilter Sonic Youth chords, and hoarse, heartfelt shouting. Notice a theme? Guitars. This album has armies of them, like a flock of birds arriving, guitars moshing into eachother, chiming, stomping, lurching in lockstep before keening off into the sky.

Volumewise, its jammed to the top of the meters front to back, and tempowise, the songs pick a pace between chugging and breakneck and stick to it, but the album, in the listening, is curiously dynamic. There's always a tonal change, a texture nuance, a shift in focus, as huge, stompy 90s guitar rock goes, this is time capsule, locked away for 21 years, gone in 21 minutes 3.5/5

You might like this if: you miss the 90's, specifically huge crushing underground guitars, more specifically Dinosaur Jr?

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