Austinist Album Reviews: Skywave and Sons

Image from Allmusic

(Alison Records)

Even though it only dropped four years ago, anyone not quite prepared for Skywave’s blistering future-shock attack must have been nailed to the wall by this record. It’s hard to tell if Synthstatic was recorded with crap gear out of necessity, or if the band blew a wad of cash on studio time only to intentionally muddy up the mix. I’m guessing the former, although the guitars are so razor-sharp I can’t help but think there was some next-level production gizmodgery going on. There are basically no dynamics—just shearing clouds of effects-drenched guitar and bottom-of-a-well vocal reverb, and even the quiet parts sound like they’re pinned at 11. It’s a truly distinctive sound, like blasting Psychocandy through a broken PA in hell. Album opener “Tsunami” rushes in on a manic drum machine beat and shearing guitar squall, making its namesake seem almost diminutive, and Synthstatic seldom lets up from there. Standout “Life To Take Your Hand” delivers on every promise shoegaze ever made, setting a ringing guitar hook against a mournful pop melody for that woozy, prom-night-on-Mars feeling you got when you first jammed Loveless in your mom’s minivan. Skywave undoubtedly broke a few hearts when they split, but they left with a hell of a swan song. (P.S. this album is currently out of print-ed.)

Skywave MySpace
Killerrockandroll.com

Image courtesy Safranin Sound

(Safranin Sound)

As suggested by the band’s name, Ceremony betrays more of a New Order-ish dance-rock vibe than a staunch shoegaze sound—the guitars and vocals are sonically indistinguishable from Skywave, but the hooks are more sugary, the beats more stridently discotheque-y, just this side of "Blue Monday." It's all great fun, until the vocals come in—with the guitars slightly de-emphasized, singer-guitarist Paul Baker is free to take the spotlight, and his thoughts on life and love are, to put it mildly, a little maudlin. Skywave was not a lyricist’s band by any stretch of the imagination, but even they were considerate enough to scratch out lines like “In my dreams I never die / then the tears rain from my eyes.” Or at least bury them under piles of distortion. Only a couple of Ceremony's numbers get snagged on such gothic whining, but it’s enough to give one reservations before recommending it to a friend. At its best, Disappear sounds like The Cure during a manic upswing, tricked out for disco goth night and ready to get busy. At its worst, it’s the coked-up kid with smudged make-up, crying into a cell phone.

Ceremony MySpace

Image courtesy Important Records

(Killer Pimp/Important Records)

It’s easy to hate on APTBS, as the past year has seen the band ride a rave review on Pitchfork into a Transatlantic tour and rapturous blog love. But then you realize, in this order, A.) some of these tunes could go toe to toe with most of what came out of the original shoegaze era, let alone the current blog-rock status quo, B.) bandleader Oliver Ackerman has been playing since 1995, and C.) what are you doing with your life, exactly? Mostly using pedals he designed and built himself, head Stranger-buryer Ackerman coaxes some fantastic sounds from his guitars, which variously sound like crumbling glaciers, exploding motorcycles, and the inside of a supercollider. Occasionally Ackerman lets the lo-fi aesthetic get away from him: the lovelorn dirge "The Falling Sun" gets off to a perfectly dismal start before an avalanche of reverberating drums bury the track alive, and start to finish it’s the dingiest-sounding album to reach its popularity level since Guided By Voices' Bee Thousand. There’s a reason for that, though: the production more than makes up in color and inventiveness what it lacks in fidelity, and there’s enough diversity to the songwriting to justify all the bells and whistles. What is not to love?

APTBS MySpace
Death By Audio