Sports Is Everything

I wasn’t expecting All of Something, the new album from Ohio’s SPORTS, to floor me the way it has. It’s pretty obvious that I love 90s guitar rock, whether it be college-era esotericism, gangly instrumental playfulness, slacker ne’er-do-wells, or dirge-like spikes of gravel-spewed aggression. But I am finding that the past month I have been falling into a lighter-limbed sonic freefall, with the likes of The Spook School, Diet Cig, Summer Flake and now Sports being my go to bands to listen to as the days get ever shorter here in London. 

Despite the plain name with the connotations of machismo and parochial rabid savagery, Sports is much more earnest and heartfelt, but without the mawkish histrionics. The album is still very much a microcosm of love and other catastrophes on the cusp of leaving adolescence truly behind, but the songs have sonic bark and verbal bite, both playful and damaged, and is a surprise tour-de-force of indie guitar pop abandon. You have the boppy, giddy C86 of 'Saturday' and 'GDP', the maudlin bedroom strum of 'Clean Socks', the urgent earnestness of 'The Washing Machine.' 'Getting On In Spite Of You' is anthemic in the most honest and carefree of ways, and 'Reality TV' Red Bull-and-hormones punk, somehow both bare-bones and beefy in delivery, with hearts brazenly pinned to the sleeve. It's all about cruising in cars, hopping in beds, falling in and out of love wearing the carapace of nonchalance while the fires burn brightly beneath. 

But the true gem is 'Stunted', which kicks off their second (and rumoured final) album All Of Something, and it is absolutely killer. The quiet opening, the warm crackle and heft of the guitars as they open up, the drums becoming a clear driving force as the final rousing crescendo hits, and the vocals all join together with Carmen Perry as they finally echo out "We both got what we wanted." It's Juliana Hatfield meets Belly meets The Muffs, and it's both 90s nostalgia and all round great universal songwriting. Perry's voice has that Hatfield/Kristin Hersh twang that could either be 90s American guitar pop twee or country and western whimsy, but is commanding all the time. I am a massive fan of this song in particular, this album in general, and Sports as a whole. If they are drifting apart, let's hope that Perry and co find other ways to give their all to something that we can all enjoy. All of Something is out now through Father/Daughter Records - get it now!

Happily Diving Headlong Into This Big Ol World

Happy Diving are a four piece who believe in opening all tracks with wails of feedback, blasting through pop conventions, mainlining sugar-rush mayhem before fading away like an imploding quasar. Their album Big World is basically one song, repeated ten times. The thing is, this actually doesn’t bother me at all – because their clearly beloved song structure of choice is delivered with such relish and volume, all imbued with amber light, it feels like a bliss bomb that you don’t want to stop tearing your very essence apart. So it can be visceral – but we are talking Whirr/Dino Jr/PAWS visceral – a sun-drenched shoegaze aesthetic adhered to scuzz-pop and hipster noise in bite-size form. This is heightened by Jack Shirley’s touch – with Deafheaven and the aforementioned Whirr receiving his mannered touch-ups, he is becoming the go-to for more angular yet aurally accessible shoegaze gauze. The press release compares the quartet to Japandroids, a band that I obviously like, but I feel the band is more akin to another SM fave, Ovlov, albeit with a sunnier disposition. Big World isn’t so big – it’s brash, familiar, and repetitive – but why get out of the pool when it’s so good?

You can get Big World (out through Father/Daughter Records) here – vinyl variations include oxblood or virgin black, but you've missed out on the oxblood and baby blue splatter on double mint - what a delicious disaster that record would be...

Getting Bent Outta Shape Over A Panel Of Experts

The Boston trio of Bent Shapes (nee Girlfriends circa '09) are shaking the boughs of expectation as the release date of their first LP of sonorous garage pop approaches, Feels Weird (out on Father/Daughter Records). The release of a couple of slices ('Behead Yrself Pt. 2' and 'Big Machines') showed that they had the chops and angular dexterity to jam-pack their punchy songs with enough sugar to bring about a brain freeze - as if Superchunk were the house band for Yo Gabba Gabba. They have a few shows coming up if you are in and around the Boston area (see below) - and if that weren't enough, here's an exclusive third bite at the cherry, with new track 'Panel of Judges':

You can pre-order Feels Weird here.

SHOWS

July 30 - Allston, MA - Great Scott (w/ The Love Language, Eternal Summers)

Aug 18 - Allston, MA - Great Scott (Record release show w/ Potty Mouth, Krill)

They're Everywheres, They're Everywheres!

Ah, Nova Scotia. There is something in the air there that always seems to produce honest musicians. It doesn't matter what genre is being crafted, there is an authenticity grafted into the fibre of the songs that you believe in what is being done, there are no smokescreens or sleights of hand, it is the real deal.

Which leads me to Sam Hill AKA The Everywheres. I haven't heard of him before now, and before last night I only had 'Easy Bells' to riff off - but this track further augments my thoughts on the Canadian region. The heat, speed and vitality that oozes from every pore of 'Easy Bells' further questions the boundaries of psych rock (something that will always appeal to me, psych fiend that I am...), whilst also caressing the elegance and patience that inhabits the best of pastoral pop. It isn't playing games - it just is, and in this line of work that is nigh on impossible to emulate.

Today I have dipped further into The Everywheres' oeuvre - and its impact has filtered everywhere through me. Flickering garage rock segues into sun-blasted waves of sonorous malaise, a warm burst of noise that doesn't come from a moment of nostalgic adulation as it does from a wormhole from the past, undiluted, pristine.

The Everywheres' debut self-titled LP comes out through Father/Daughter Records late June, and you get the feeling that this is the kind of album that will invariably get stuck in the tape player, glued to the turntable, and time will stand still even as it flies on by (especially when it looks this good). It's impossible to truly pinpoint why this resonates as much as it does when there are legions of likeminded acts - but it just does. Honesty, authenticity, simplicity, and an innateness of self - The Everywheres are everywhere, and everything, you could want and/or need. You can pre-order it here.