Rapidfire Reviews: Club Night, Petrov, Bleed, Shunkan
Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Club Night – Joy Coming Down
Most of the words that could be used to describe Joy Coming Down, and Club Night by extension, sound like critiques. The Oakland, CA, band’s sophomore record is messy and cluttered, frantic and overwrought–it sounds like the racing thoughts of an overcaffeinated paranoiac (a diagnosis somewhat borne out in the lyrics). These qualities, of course, are excellent what makes Joy Coming Down so successful and, in fact, the peak of Club Night’s output thus far.
2019’s What Life packed a career’s worth of ideas and influences into eight songs and 36 minutes; although Joy Coming Down includes only one more song, it’s six minutes longer, and that reflects the breadth of sounds crammed into this thing. Variously you might be reminded of Los Campesinos!’s spit-shined indie pop, Wolf Parade’s kitchen-sink post-punk, The World Is…’s maximalist emo, or even Cap’n Jazz’s youthful math rock, but at no point does Club Night sound overly beholden to their influences (“I am the product of everyone I’ve ever met,” sings Josh Bertram). Every successive verse of “Rot,” for example, twists the song in a slightly different direction, like each one is a funhouse mirror reflection of the previous until the song’s bridge feels like every individual part played at once; the instrumentation backing Bertram on “Lake” sounds like a record skipping and wearing out. They manage to turn the chaos into catharsis on “Station,” a song that consistently picks up speed like a cartoon snowball while managing to deliver the LP’s most monstrous hook, and on the skittery six-minute closer “Rabbit,” a tribute to Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson. On the last lyric of the LP, Bertram repurposes that famous lyric from Frightened Rabbit’s “Head Rolls Off.” Despite everything, at the end of all of it, his voice cuts clear through the noise: “I’ll make tiny changes to earth.”
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Petrov – Petrov
Petrov’s earlier releases had a loose, almost danceable quality to them, pulling liberally from mid-2ooos post-punk to give their sharp-edged pop-punk a distinctive flair. Petrov, the band’s debut full-length, tightens things up a bit; the world has changed in the half-decade since the Charlotte, NC, five-piece dropped their Flower Bed EP, and damn it so have they, trading the unpredictability of their prior material for a cleaner, sleeker sound.
Petrov’s always had a knack for writing a killer mid-tempo pop rock song, making up for the more relaxed pace with even more impressive dynamic shifts (see: “Misprint,” “Keepers,” “Pink Moon”), and the middle run of Petrov features a couple of the band’s best tracks back to back. “Shift in You” wrings as much pathos as possible out of its simple snaking guitar line and Mary Grace McKusick’s repeated pleading: “I can’t get through / I can’t get through / I can’t get through to you,” and “Nonzero” balances the restrained guitar work with one of McKusick’s most soaring vocal melodies to date. Her voice has always been one of the band’s strengths; the chorus of “You’re It,” for example, she belts out like it’s the last thing she’ll do. One of their other assets was their sneakily technical guitar work, which unfortunately gets dialed down a bit on Petrov as their sound gets more streamlined. There are still moments that pop out–like the bouncy riff that opens “Hex”–but they seem to have settled a bit more into a groove here. Still, it’s been a long time since Petrov’s put out new material, and for a while there it seemed like an LP was never going to come. If there’s a bit of charm lost in the polish, that’s a fair trade to make.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Bleed – Bleed
Yes, it’s true, this is well-worn territory by now: gauzy soundscapes, moaned vocals, clear Deftones inspiration. 2021’s Somebody’s Closer EP was a worthy entry into the into the genre, but on their self-titled new LP, Bleed has taken a massive step forward. The Texas quintet manage to make their throwback alt-metal sound fresh, even occasionally vital, on Bleed, proving themselves to be a cut above many of their jorts-clad peers.
“Climbing Down” makes this clear from the jump, with turntable scratches softening the blow of the breakdown that opens the record. The song quickly establishes everything Bleed does well, mixing dreary and droney vocals with crushing riffs and a nice helping of electronics to keep things interesting. The introduction of turntable scratches, drum machines, and programmed elements does indeed help Bleed feel more organically in line with the nu-metal and alt-metal of the 1990s while also serving to distinguish the band from so many of the other groups playing around in the same space. The programmed drums on “Through the Cylinder” make the pummeling, overblown riff that follows hit even harder, and the electronic break in “Slip” gives the track some depth. The most impressive song on Bleed, though, is the one that deviates most from the formula. The penultimate track, “Shallow,” integrates acoustic guitars and never aspires toward the punishing crunch the rest of the record does so well. The percussion sounds more organic than anywhere else on the record, and even when Ryan Hughes’ voice is doubled, it never takes on the snarl he sometimes adopts. It’s the only real moment of lightness on the album, but it shows that Bleed’s got far more up their sleeve than even their best singles had suggested.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
Shunkan – Kamikaze Girl
“I could be prettier,” sings Marina Sakamoto,” but I wouldn’t be me,” at the start of “Prettier,” the second to last song on Shunkan’s upcoming sophomore album and the one she’s said she’s proudest of. That’s something of a thesis statement for Kamikaze Girl, a record about Sakamoto “reevaluat[ing] [her] marriage, [her]self, just everything” and trying to make peace with what she discovered. “I really got in touch with myself again and and issues that I was having,” she notes of the period when she was writing Kamikaze Girl, “the most honest” material she’s ever released. On “Prettier,” the longest Shunkan song to date, it’s easy to hear exactly where she’s coming from: “I want to make you cry so you know I’m not weak,” she sings before guitars start to explode under her like fireworks. The song’s final minute or so is dedicated wholly to a blown-out riff as she coos wordlessly over it, audibly seething.
Her first EP of covers, back in 2015, included songs by both The Cranberries and The Jesus and Mary Chain, and that’s a nice way to think about where Shunkan’s coming from. These are fluttering alt rock songs, guitars thick like honey without dipping into straight-up shoegaze territory, and Sakamoto’s melodic ear is sharp even when, like at the end of “Prettier” or the chorus of “INALYNAF” (“I Need a Lover You Need a Friend”), she isn’t actually singing anything. The hooks, though, are enormous all over Kamikaze Girl: “Sidekick” starts off strong with its buzzy riff and kicks into another gear with its indelible, towering chorus; “Usual Suspects” earns its place as a prerelease single with its knotty melody; and closer “Gilligan’s Island” would’ve been a ’90s radio hit in another life. “Somehow I am still alive,” Sakamoto belts before ceding the spotlight to a lowkey guitar solo. When she spits out, “We’re barely surviving” in the song’s chorus, she makes it like a privilege.
Disappointing / Average / Good / Great / Phenomenal
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Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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