Rapid Fire Reviews: Mannequin Pussy, gobbinjr, Haybaby

Posted: by The Editor

vom-night

gobbinjr- Vom Night

“I just wanna be perfect / Anything less is shameful,” is the best line on gobbinjr’s latest EP Vom Night for two reasons. One, it’s an excellent representation of the telling, confessional lyricism that’s spread throughout the six gorgeous tracks. Two, after listening through it a few times, the line becomes somewhat of a thesis statement for how the NYC-based songwriter constructed this project. Although it has the homemade feel of works by Teen Suicide, Elvis Depressedly, Alex G and Eskimeaux, Vom Night’s squeaky clean production elevates it to a different level of the bedroom-pop scene—one that could smoothly transition gobbinjr into a broader market if she were so inclined.

Even at such a young age she’s already mastered and advanced beyond the conventional pop hook, as the peppy opener “Mantee” is filled with both an earworm synth melody and a catchy chorus. She knows how to build a song that’s enticing from start to finish, as the two longest tracks on the EP, “Undies” and “May We All Have Space,” are stuffed with layers of synths, plucky rhythms, and carefully leveled harmonies. Many of these tracks find the middleground between bubbly and somber, but she hits her sweet spot when she sings, “I just want the human race to die / I just want to be your firefly,” over haunting organs that grow tenser as they blend with a swirl of keys.

That’s during the closer, “Firefly,” but the same nuanced crescendo is successfully packed into the beauteous “Perfect” in less than two minutes. The aforementioned lyric about perfection is fearlessly repeated over and over as she adds new synth lines, flanger effects, and vocal pitch shifts. Though, not once does she bury the lyric in the mix. It’s a proclamation of what Vom Night is and where it will ultimately take gobbinjr. An EP like this deserves everyone’s attention. Anything less is shameful.

Rating: 8.7/10

romantic

Mannequin Pussy- Romantic

While Vom Night is one of the prettiest releases of the year, Mannequin Pussy’s sophomore LP Romantic is one of the ugliest. This 17-minute mashup of a dozen different types of rock is utterly headspinning—rivaling the breathless intensity of Jeff Rosenstock’s Worry that dropped two weeks earlier. Marisa Dabice’s vocals are mostly incomprehensible, as she’s either violently snarling, smeared with distortion, or belting mouthfuls of lyrics at such a fast pace that you can’t keep up.

This is part of what makes the record so interesting though. These songs are so manic, so reckless, and so coarse that they force the listener to just sit the fuck down and really feel the unadulterated anxiety the band is puking forward. Listening to this record can be uncomfortable, simply because there’s not a single part of any song where you can zone out, and the transitions are so sudden and unpredictable. A hardcore punk track like “Ten” will screech by and quickly give way to a rough, power-pop song like “Emotional High” that appears to signal a more melodic turn in the tracklist. But nope. The eerie “Pledge” follows, then the second power-pop track “Denial,” and then when you think you’ve got it figured out, it’s back to blistering hardcore.

There’s some stuff in here that sounds like the new Merchandise record did a line of a Screaming Females album, some Pixies worship, and even a gospely choir intro on the last track that sounds like they snuck in the beginning of a Kanye song. Sometimes records that are this frenzied end up sounding sloppy. Romantic isn’t one of those. Despite being raw and deranged, Mannequin Pussy know how to play their instruments and they know how to write a damn good song. It doesn’t just sound like a band toying with a range of styles. It sounds like a band who’ve moved beyond that stage, actually possess that range, and are now piecing that diverse pallet together to create a whole new style.

Rating: 8.2/10

haybaby-yours

Haybaby- Yours

In April, the Brooklyn trio Haybaby released one of the best EP’s of the year, Blood Harvest, via the budding indie powerhouse Tiny Engines (The Hotelier, Adult Mom, Mannequin Pussy). The band really came into their own on those five tracks, developing a tense, sinister sound that pairs hooky, minor key basslines and whispered verses with abrupt outbursts of grungy riffs and menacing wails. “Yours,” the one-off single the band unexpectedly dropped this past Thursday, continues to build on that formula with a climax that’s even more explosive than any of the tracks on Blood Harvest.

With a lead riff that embodies the soundtrack to a slasher film, the verses slowly, though predictably, become more intense as they lead up to a thick, chugging riff that vocalist Leslie Hong growls over. The band queued us in to their affinity with heavy music on the hardcore bruiser “What It Is” from Blood Harvest, but the chorus of this song encourages the type of Neolithic fist pumping a Code Orange track would incite. There’s also a strange delay effect on the guitar midway through the song that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Trent Reznor project.

That’s not to say the band is vying for a spot on next year’s This Is Hardcore lineup, but the direction they’re moving in seems to be heavier, darker, and bolder. It’ll be interesting to see where Haybaby end up in 2017.

Rating: 7.2/10

Eli Enis @xelienisx