I love a good made-up, one-off, one-of-the-spot genre tag, so a line like “an Art Death Indie Post-Punk Rock Alternative” gives me goosebumps just reading it. And like all made-up, one-off, one-of-the-spot genre tags, it suggests so much and tells you little. Words, eh? They always fail you when you need them most, but the line does make you want to drop the needle on the record and find out for yourself…so that is what I did.
And like all strange bands (and I mean that in the most positive sense of the word…strange is good, it’s the place to be, right?), Hide and Shine has a strange backstory. Not for the first time did the main man, Chris Kelly, experience a psychic download of sonic inspiration, and those initial ideas and inspirations formed the basis of this, their third album. (And for those doubters, Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’ after a similar dreamstate revelation. So there!)
Blending a sort of college rock familiarity with a scuzzy, alt-alt-alt-pop vibrancy, an accessible vibe with an underground abrasive indie cool, 9 Seconds Before Revolution feels like an album out of time, certainly not one beholden to fad and fashion and all that nonsense…it goes its own way and any discerning music fan should, and indeed, must, follow.
‘Cascade’ kicks off with confidence and ragged beauty, too melodic to be merely garage rock, too clever to be another alt-rock tune, too rambunctious (that’s a good word, don’t you think) to be just a pop song; it is all those things and more. Accessible in the same way that, say, The Replacements were-; music made between pop and a hard place.
‘Chopper’ is darker, rawer, and yet still remarkably addictive, the sort of fist-in-the-air anthem that makes you want to start a revolution, even if you aren’t quite sure of what you are rallying against…maybe just having the soundtrack is enough. ‘Denouement’ is sonically dense and restless, full of momentum and melody and muscle, and ‘All We Are is Nothing But A Weekend’ feels like it is a song written merely to start a fight on the dancefloor…dangerous stuff in the live environment, methinks.
If this fantastic suite of songs, or at least the impetus for it, was downloaded by the Gods of Music in some act of divine inspiration, like Prometheus bringing fire to us mere mortals, it’s almost enough to make me take up religion. Almost.
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