This San Francisco band features members of Kowloon Walled City and Early Graves. They play a dreamy style of indie rock that has am edge to that can be heard on the second song. Somewhere between post-punk and noise rock in the sonic spectrum. The first song was hookier, but the sounds on the second song are pleasing enough to the ears to not feel like total filler. "Nowhere to Run" falls closer to the Strokes of Interpol in the tense guitar that is still more playful than Joy Division. Sometimes this takes on more of a 90s rock feel, with grunge undertones surfacing. This always was a thing back in day with bands like Sebadoh, who I could see being an influence on this band as well.
They work better when atmosphere takes a more prevailing role. This can be heard on "Antenna" that kinds buzzes along perhaps too middle of the road. The entire sound could be darker for my tastes, so having to step back and listen to this from the perspective of someone into this sort of thing. I guess if you want to call this post- punk it's a very vanilla take on it. "Degenerator" finds a groove that gives the vocals more rom to work , but the vocals stay plaintive to a fault. By the time the album winds around to "Head in a Cage" I feel like I am just having to power through the rest of this album.
The title track is one of the album's strongest songs and makes me wonder why they do not do more of this. There is more shadow to the ambiance. The vocals are more emotive. The last two songs I had to give a further listen to as they both breezed past me as the stream of the album kept playing. There is more of a Smashing Pumpkins vibe to "Summer School". The last song however failed to make more of an impact after repeat listens. I any will round this down to a 7.5, it's not ineffective when it comes to writing the songs they wanted to make as everything went well in the studio, it just lacks sense of danger. The song writing feels too calculated to not be more hooky.
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