More like an indie-garage-pot smoking rock. There's some Mac Demarco vibes in track 3 'it came from the heart'. Guitar heavy/mad riffing pretty much throughout the album bar track 12. I say medium rotation but honestly there's some good tracks. B--
multiple lead vocalists means a huge range of sounds; track one think a more structured sounding Grouplove (and Canadian so hints of folk). But in saying that these guys range from the beginning of track 2 being Foals-esque music teamed with similar vocals to Emily Haines (Metric) and track 6 'the first night we met' is like a chord heavy 'i wish i was dead pt 2' . Overall solid spin B+++
Hey I remember these guys! They released a few singles in the late 90s and early 00s (one was a split with Ink & Dagger if that means anything to you) and were part of a Jackass-like entity called Buddyhead that infamously published Fred Durst's personal phone number on their website instructing people to harass him for making shitty music. They were more spastic and chaotic then (influenced by the Refused and the numerous Gravity REcords bands that populated southern California at the time) but this album is pretty subdued. By "subdued" I mean slower but no less intense. The heavy and hazy guitars paired with droning keyboards makes me think of Queens of the Ston Age making an appearance in a Robert Smith nightmare. Is this what the LA rock scene is like now? Heavy psych vampire rock? Avoid tracks 4 and 6 unless you want angry phone calls from listeners.
They should've named this album "a sorry excuse" instead of trying to reference Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Having named their album Crooked Brain they set themselves up for either failure or success, and they ended up in failure. They call themselves post-grunge when there's no grit in their songs. The only grunge thing that would come out of this album is that I would shoot myself rather than listen to this. It's post-rock, specifically boring post-rock (no need for edgy self-labeling when you're not producing anything unique).
