Alpenglow
A Menomena member’s heady response to the pitfalls of tech, sublime guitars from Vermont and revivalism done right, all in this week’s new band round-up from Getintothis’ Patrick Clarke.
With his new project White Wine, Joe Hague claims he wants to ‘mock the future’. “Less empathy, more distraction, no focus, the digital preaching to the choir of social media and the endless ways in which technology digs deeper into our lives” evangelizes the 31knots guitarist and Menomena affiliate ahead of March’s debut album Who Cares What the Laser Says?
The first taste, Where Is My Line? is a heady collision of off-kilter textures, with dissonant squalls and arhythmic tinkles scattered in perfect chaos around a swaggering centre of bubbling drums, Hague‘s vocals spat with perfect vexation.
Japanese label Chizu records, in contrast, describes itself as “A record label for the digital age!”, and sees its first release on Friday 24, the debut album Callisto from Vermont foursome Alpenglow, with three lusciously atmospheric cuts from the record previewing online now
Following The Scene, the pick of the bunch, opens with a similar hazy rumble of drums as opens Radiohead‘s There There, Alpenglow boast a similar knack for sublimely crafted melancholia, the track swoons with peppered lilts of strings and sweet fizzes of keys, while Solitude takes a Teenage Fanclub melody, adds a spine of thick rhythm and adorns it in a flawless slather of psychedelic texture.
All show off a supreme lead vocal somewhere between Thom Yorke and Jim Jones – the My Morning Jacket frontman they consider a ‘spiritual guru’ – but none more so than Dreaming Too Much, backed by heady, hypnotic bass to drive the instrumental.
It’s hard to imagine the pros and cons of the digital era are much concern to Peckham rock ‘n’ rollers Tangerines, who, for all their qualities, feel most certainly like revivalists on new single You Look Like Something I Killed, released as a limited 7″ on March 18. That said, such is the gleeful vigour of their effervescent hooks of guitar and the amiable, individual snarl of frontman Gareth Hoskins, that it’s revivalism done completely right.
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