#2434 Chastity Belt - Time to Go Home

There's something unexpectedly modern here. Some moment that snaps.

90's revival, on the surface of it. 2nd wave surf revival, check (and thank you).

But there's something about the way that Chastity Belt spin out their frustrations that feels natural and unforced and from a feminine perspective, with a feminism so casual that it barely registers; less Riot Grrrl, more Why Girl. Even when Julia sings "ladies its ok to be...it's ok to be slutty", it's with such resignation that it's less a call to arms, more a sigh into a truth she's tired of having to explain.

90's how? The guitars are 90's, sure enough. But it's also that grunge resignation in new clothes. But also, aside: pet theory: the 90's was the last gasp of the album-shaped album, where flows mattered, where listens had beginning, middles, and ends. And that's on full display here, a swamp of simmering anger and misery, spiked by guitars, soothed by other guitars, soft and hard and soft.

It's fitting that the fastest song is about John Carpenter's The Thing - a movie about social distrust, body horror, and claustrophobic dread -- what better metaphor for burgeoning adulthood in scopes small and large.

And into the gorgeous arpeggiations of Joke, an Anchorage mirror cementing Chastity Belt as Surfer Blood's older, wiser, more jaded sister band.

But most crucial's that closing final track. Pet theory 2: last-track--title-track's the ultimate sequencing power move.

After Why Try, after On the Floor, after I Don't Care, after we're all giving up, the solution's dark side rears its head, and the wasted, staggering desperation comes to roost, and Time to Come Home wraps up with a loss // taking of control that falls all over itself as a defiant grasp of power that will feel familiar to anyone that's found themselves at the end of a cycle and pulling the big escape hatch lever as hard as their body weight will bear -- and suddenly it's over, probably to repeat tomorrow 4.5/5