Kansas City surf rockers/psych
poppers Shy Boys ostensibly love two things over everything else: a blissful
jangle and burying emotions. Their stellar self-titled debut from January of
this year frequently blended the two into a melancholic, but masterful swirl.
You could hear that lead singer Collin Rausch was aching in a track like "And I Am Nervous",
though with the reverberating you weren't entirely sure what was causing the
pain.
With grittier sounding guitars
and constantly thumping drums, effortless new single "Life Is Peachy"
doesn't make solving the complicated equation any easier. Somewhere in that
joyous noise Rausch is heard faintly singing "out there wasting
time." But it's not clear if it's the wasted day where you kick back on
the beach and watch the hours tick away with a smile on your face and a beer in
your hand; or the far more nefarious day where you half-panic when asking
"where did the time go??" Having seen them live several times now in
the Kansas City area, it's no less a mystery in person. Judging from the
borderline "frantic" pace the band travels at on "Life Is
Peachy" and Rausch's wordless cries at the end, the latter scenario seems
more likely. Still there's no easy answer to the question and Shy Boys seem to
want it that way. There’s looseness in Shy Boys’ playing, but careful
construction in their songwriting. Collin Rausch, brother Kyle, and Konnor
Ervin could be "wasting time" but they're not wasting
talent.
(You can hear "Life Is
Peachy" now
on Stereogum and look for the single to drop on July 15 through High Dive Records.)
Dream-pop trio Fear of Men make
relationships sound absolutely torturous. When they're gliding along on the
sunny fizzles and fuzzes of "Luna",
Janet Weiss hits the E-brake to whisper "I've tried my best to destroy
you." Whatever goals the couple once had have deteriorated into a
competition fueled by stubborn pride and a profound unwillingness to see the
writing on the wall. In writhing slow-number "Outrun
Me", unwillingness is transcribed into a refusal to leave behind
something wholly familiar. Experiencing love for the first time is a
magnificent thing, but having to move on can be agonizing. It's devastating,
and only in that wreckage do you realize the cliché "you never forget your
first" exists for a reason.
The devastation on display in
the Brighton-group's latest effort "Descent", is far more subtle but
no less monumental. When Weiss softly exhales "cause I have you" in
the sparkling chorus, you think you're hearing of an unshakable friendship that
James
Taylor and Carole King would approve of. The type of friendship that puts
you closest to your actual-self, where there's very little you have to hide. A
friend who will pull you out of "nothingness" as Weiss puts it in the
jangly intro. It sounds so blissful, something anyone would sign up for in an
instant. But few would sign on the dotted line after hearing Weiss recount
"spending half my life next to you." All of the time spent is taxing, to
the point Weiss can't even finish her thought; she can only offer a
disconsolate "oooh." Then you realize a life-long relationship isn't
always liberating, it can also be a prison sentence you never come back from.
You'll watch the days go by, marking them off in chalk, and pray for anything
to take you away.
Fear of Men's debut LP Loom is out April 21 in the UK and April 22 in the U.S. through Kanine Records.
