Album Review: Stagnant Pools- Geist
Combining a Death From Above 1979 and Japandroids aesthetic
with some of the murk and noise of early A Place to Bury Strangers,
Bloomington, IN’s Stagnant Pools, despite wearing their influences on their
sleeves, were a hot breath of fresh air in the summer of 2012, arriving with
their debut LP Temporary Room. Mixing
aggressive, distended guitar playing with frenetic percussion, and ominous
vocals buried deep within the layers, the band always sounded on the verge of
losing it completely, but were somehow able to keep it together and power
through the songs.
Two years later, the sibling duo has resurfaced with their
sophomore effort, Geist, and even on
the opening track, “You Whir,” I could tell that Stagnant Pools had started to
grow and mature as a band—playing tighter, but also, stripping away all of the
reverb in the vocals, and therefore stripping away some of the mystery that the
band shrouded themselves in.
One thing that was not so clear on Temporary Room that is very apparent now is the hollow, haunted Ian
Curtis-esq deadpan deliveries from singer/guitarist Bryan Enas—something you
can glean on the catchy, dreamy “Dots and Lines.” Another aspect of Geist that’s worth noting is that while
Stagnant Pools were never an act to entertain self-indulgence, it’s very
obvious they aren’t here to fuck around. Only one out of the album’s ten tracks
makes it beyond the four-minute mark—the hard-hitting “Filed Down.” And even
then, it has a breathless urgency, similarly to the other nine tracks. Geist’s brevity makes for a short listen—the
album wraps up before you even realize it, and the album’s length, as well as
the kind of unrelenting nature of the songwriting also gives it a touch of punk
rock brashness.
Stagnant Pools is the kind of band that isn’t concerned with
writing “pop” songs, but they some how manage to churn out some catchy hooks,
and some of Geist’s songs are more
effective than others—the aforementioned “Dots and Lines,” “Filed Down,” and
the opening one-two punch of “You Whir,” which segues into “To Begin” are all
standouts. The drastic change with the vocals isn’t exactly a bad thing, but it
was just incredibly jarring to hear upon my first listen of Geist, and it took a few times through
for me to come to terms with the increase in production value, and when
comparing the two releases, Geist
becomes not nearly as immediate of a listen. What you get here is a band that
is not growing out of their sound, but is certainly becoming more comfortable
within the dynamic they’ve built over the last two years.
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