Today's Hotness: Today Junior, Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam, Under Electric Light

>> We're starting to wonder if there will be music coming out of Norwood, Massachusett's Hanging Horse Studios that we DON'T like. The latest set birthed there to traverse our proverbial desk is a very rewarding debut long-player from Allston indie-pop upstarts Today Junior. The trio is comprised of brothers Mike and Harry O'Toole, who execute drumming and guitaring duties for the outfit respectively, along with bassist Anthony Ambrose, who may or may not be someone's brother. Today Junior's new LP Ride The Surf touts uptempo tunes that work bright, recognizable motifs in ways that don't sound tired or trite, gliding all the while through a steady, sock-deep reverb. What sets Today Junior's music apart from that of other acts chasing a sun 'n 'surf-inspired sound is the passionate singing and mindful breakdowns and grooves that the Allstonians work into their concise pop nuggets. The band's music is less noir and melancholy than that of presumably defunct Chicagoans Distractions, who put out one of our favorite records of 2010, but the bands are similar in that they twist the familiar into something memorable. And there are many, many memorable numbers on Ride The Surf, including its cracking, well-calculated title track, which, incidentally, plays host to a really hot guitar solo. One song that memorably checks both the "breakdowns" and "grooves" boxes is the deeper album cut "Daydrifter." The waning moments of the terrific strummer "What I Said" show the act minds the p's and q's of songcraft; there perfect, classically California-sounding vocal harmonies manifest as cool "oooh la la las" and point to Harry O'Toole's final, passionately delivered vocal, which rolls off punctuating guitar chords and onto a fading trickle of stick clicks. Ride The Surf was recorded between May 2014 and May 2015 at the aforementioned studio, which has also generated recordings we like a lot by hitmakers Julius Earthling and Soft Fangs. Today Junior fêted the release of Ride The Surf Monday night at Cambridge, Mass.'s Middle East Rock club, and we presume additional live engagements are forthcoming. For now, get your ears around the record while its summery sounds can properly contextualize this golden summer. Stream the entire set via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through the purchase it as a digital download.



>> Indie rock luminaries Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam returned this past weekend with a new EP and a tantalizing promise of yet more new music to come before the year is out. The Birmingham, England trio's Neighbours EP boasts three rockers spanning fewer than nine minutes, boisterous bar anthems all that bash and pop from within folds of reverb and slapback. The title track initiates the proceedings by cycling two towering chords, and the guitars buzz and feedback into the corners of the mix during a dynamic pre-chorus. When the massive, shout-along chorus of "Neighbors" -- which gets a dazzling video treatment here -- hits, it is characteristically huge and grand, and recalls a revved up take on precursor band Calories' stein-swinging "Let's Pretend That We're Older." What's that? You don't recall Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam's impressive lineage? The act sprang from the desperately great Calories, which itself was begat by the dissolution of Birmingham legends Distophia, something we've recounted in these electronic pages regularly. Neighbours' two additional numbers are similarly stirring: the belter "New Womb" throbs under the weight of its own crumbling distortion, driven by a straight-ahead beat and a staccato, descending guitar melody, while "Part Time Butcher" ratchets up the syncopation and conjures yet larger clouds of crash cymbal to buffet its ragged, but bold, vocal. The EP comes relatively hot on the heels of a digital single released in June featuring the tunes "Paradise Telephone" b/w/ "Real Romantix," and based on this Facebook post, it would seem we are entering a period of renewed activity for the wildly under-rated trio. Sunshine Frisbee Laserbeam's next gig is Aug. 15 at The Wagon And Horses in Digbeth, Birmingham, and the band has also snagged a choice slot opening for highly regarded noisemakers Metz in Birmingham Oct. 30. We don't have any inside information, but we'd lay strong money that there is more new music from SFL around that time of that Metz show (as that would pretty much epitomize striking while the iron is hot). In the meantime, stream all of Neighbours via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through the acquire the set as a paywhutchyalike digital download. More bulletins as events warrant.



>> Veteran Montreal 'gaze project Under Electric Light first hit our radar with its stirring 2011 rocker "Waiting For The Rain To Fall," whose big melodic sound band founder Danny Provencher ascribed to his love of the Beach Boys and classic shoegaze records. None of us, Mr. Provencher included, could have known then that four years on we'd be living in an age where My Bloody Valentine, RIDE, Slowdive and Swervedriver are once again active. Which we suppose is neither here nor there, but it is amazing to consider how far we've come, and in some ways how much the future looks and sounds like our cherished past. For his part, Provencher (along with vocalist/lyricist Marie-Eve Bouchard) seems no less enamored of the aforementioned classic shoegaze sounds and big melodies in 2015, based on much time spent with Under Electric Light's recently self-released EP Never Lose Another Day. To be sure, the beat-driven and guitar-drenched opener "Pieces Of Me" is the collection's most immediate (if a bit by-the-numbers) song. However, it is the EP's solemn closer "Runaway Sun" that is the real stunner. Gentle and subdued, the track builds up from a bed of synth and acoustic and e-bowed guitars into an ethereal fog, recalling at times the more melancholy tunes of The Ocean Blue (whose first three records, incidentally, will be released by Shelflife on vinyl for the first time ever in November). Stream all of Never Lose Another Day via the Bandcamp embed below, and click through to purchase the set. Under Electric Light recently contributed a cover of the RIDE rarity "King Bullshit" to the digital compilation Leave Them All Behind, which was issued by The Blog That Celebrates Itself in March; check it out here. It is worth noting that Liverpool's Hail Hail Records has since taken on Never Lose Another Day, and is offering it for sale via its own digital storefront right here.

Review: Hoax Hunters | Comfort & Safety

Richmond threesome Hoax Hunters with its debut long-player has created an expansive, divergent set of punk-worshipping monoliths, each tune shaping an American post-hardcore lineage into formalized and nostalgic architectural shapes. The electrifying new set, Comfort & Safety, firmly establishes the trio as a noisy, squalling force, one that is both more informed and more nubile [HEY NOW -- Ed.] than many of its peers.

Hoax Hunters has been a fixture slowly rising up from the RVA scene for several years; it released a split single with Richmond dream-pop luminaries The Snowy Owls in early 2013. Long before the creation of the band, fronter and guitarist P.J. Sykes built a reputation as a go-to music photographer, relentlessly and selflessly documenting the local indie rock scene, and having work featured in Spin Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Mr. Sykes has also contributed photographs to a slew of highly regarded albums from Clicky Clicky faves including legends Superchunk and Versus. Unsurprisingly, Sykes' connected-ness within the mid-Atlantic music scene is the source of one of Comfort & Safety's strongest, defining traits: his love for currently overlooked post-hardcore standard-bearers from the mid-to-late-'80s Dischord stable -- groups like Rites of Spring, Gray Matter, Three and early Fugazi -- is reflected in his songwriting. These aforementioned bands moved punk into broader, more melodic, "mathy," and noisy territory, and to this reviewer their contributions at times seem overshadowed by trendier names and louder personalities. Hoax Hunters, however, honors these deeper and deeply important roots of the American underground, and casts their sounds and ideals within a modern framework, much like contemporary beloved and buzzed smashers Metz and Hausu.

Hoax Hunters' connection to The Snowy Owls is also illuminating. While far from a shoegazer outfit, Sykes and co. interestingly mix the vocals quite low, a move that emphasizes the shifting lead and rhythm patterns, which come courtesy of The Snowy Owls' drummer James O'Neill. Mr. O'Neill's drums bash loudly, and his great tom work is heavily foregrounded on Hoax Hunters' buzz-sawing rocker "Volume" and its tense thriller "Riskless Business." Clever studio trickery throughout injects interesting depth and dimension to Comfort & Safety and varies from song to song. Single "Breathe" utilizes swirling flange and panning in its opening moments to tasteful effect, and Sykes' various vocal filters here and elsewhere supply a subtly grit to the proceedings. Like many classic albums, these production methods give Hoax Hunters' debut a kineticism that accretes across the record toward album highlight and de facto closer "Erase." The standout track -- which apparently features "homemade electric dulcitar" from a guest player -- combines an experimental sound-collage introduction, a quick-burning hardcore song, and an extended, searing coda (which talks the listener down from the intensity of the previous numbers) to create what is perhaps Hoax Hunters most compelling composition to date. The chorus' dynamic, shout-along chant channels both the rage and joy that these guys bring to their music. "You. Can. Not. Erase," Sykes proclaims -- the final declaration that the hard work and values of those within a scene will live on, again and again.

Comfort & Safety was released last week on vinyl and as a digital download (sorry, no CDs, retro futurists!). Raleigh's Negative Fun is selling the LP (the very first to be offered by the label), and it is for sale right here. Richmond-based Cherub Records is handling the digital download sales, and if that is more to your taste, this is where you want to be. Stream the entire set via the Bandcamp embed below. -- Edward Charlton

Hoax Hunters: Bandcamp | Facebook | Internerds

That Was The Show That Was: Metz, The Men, Desert Sharks | The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA | 25 July

Last time a Metz show in Boston actually went off, the room erupted into one big, drunken mosh pit, one that threatened the structural integrity of the fabled Middle East Rock Club. But for Thursday's free, shoe company-sponsored gig at a relatively new Harvard Square venue, one might have wondered just how nuts was the crowd really gonna get? The answer, it turns out, is very, very nuts.

After a solid warm-up set from New York punks Desert Sharks, the crowd anxiously anticipated what was to come from The Men. The question was, which version of the Brooklyn-based five-piece would show up? Would the set favor the Tom Petty-worship of 2013's exceptional New Moon LP, or the scuzzed punk with which The Men first made a name for themselves? In the end, fans got a little bit of both. The act opened just after 10 with what felt like a good five minutes of pulsating feedback, before bassist Ben Greenberg commenced a vicious two-note riff. The band then tore into what sounded an awful lot like "Oscillation" from 2012's Open Your Heart. It's hard to be certain, as the room sound for the set at times seemed unable to contain the band's sonic assault. The vocals and drums, in particular, struggled for recognition from underneath the throbbing might of the guitars. Even so, what could be heard sounded fantastic. In a move seemingly influenced by the characteristic intensity of the headliners, The Men emphasized the thrashier end of its considerably malleable sound, gradually layering in more and more noise before sloppily coming to a close. The highlight of its set, however, was a grooved-out take on a standout track from New Moon, "I Saw Her Face."

While The Men were received warmly, it was clear the youth were getting restless as Metz's sound check wore on. The kids wanted to mosh, hard -- and eventually they did. The last time the Torontonian trio came to Boston, the show was canceled due to, in their words, "some asshole who tried to blow up the marathon." It seemed Metz played Thursday night as if they had something to prove to make up for the missed show; the crowd was ready to meet the band's determination. The first drumroll of "Dirty Shirt" incited a massive circle pit, one that didn't dissipate until Metz burned through an extended, droning rendition of album closer "Negative Space" (bonus points go to the dude moshing with the Metz 12" tucked under his arm). What Metz lack in variation song-to-song, they more than make up for in visceral energy and shuddering intensity. Fronter Alex Edkins stared into the crowd and literally screamed the sweat off his face more times than this writer could keep track of. The night's greatest moment occurred when the band asked for the crowd to "take care of each other" before "Get Off," a tune that rocketed the crowd into an especially ecstatic frenzy. By the time Metz slumped back on stage for a quick encore, everyone in the room was too fried to even react; the Canadians had effectively squeezed all the energy out of the room. Stream the single version of "Negative Space" via the Bandcamp embed below. Metz embark on an eight-date European tour next week, return to the States for four festival dates in late summer, and then head back to Europe for a significantly longer campaign that begins on Halloween in Reykjavik, although there is no Halloween in Iceland. And that's one to grow on... -- Dillon Riley



Metz: Bandcamp | Internerds | Tumblr | Twitter

The Men: Internerds

Rock Over Austin: Metz

Rock Over Austin: Metz