Bare Mutants on Hozac Rcords

The mighty label HOZAC bestowed a pile of singles on the 7inches, and I am super excited to start working through them, starting with this one from Bare Mutants which features members of The Ponys, and The Mannequin Men among others. One of those groups I get a little jealous of, they've all been out there working for years through a bunch of bands and venues to get to this place. To come together for the precise purpose of making this dense, hazy distorted pop.

A-Side's "Without You" has a cavernous sound, a hint of delayed echo on a single snare hit, a slow deliberate organ grind against this sludgy beat, sounding simultaneously like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Joy Division's special wall of sound endgame. Jered's even got that Ian curtis kind of phrasing, a slow paced vocal with tiny flourishes at key monents, that deep baritone, turning into a psych laced post industrial punk. Slower guitar distortions emerge, taking their time. That repeated "Without You" is where I'm hearing that JD sound, like "Atmosphere" but this song eventually takes a faster '60s turn with a sped up kick/tom beat, all the sounds blasting together, layers and layers for a big finish, to maybe drop kick in the sadness, this is it... it's really over.

"Inside My Head" on the B-Side drops the weirdo feedback fading in, and a jangle electric starts up, a little bit sweeter this time. There's a big hit again, the sleighbell shake against that huge tom hit is just a great example of that classic psych sound, and the deep, distanced vocals, (a Sisters of Mercy thing?), the organ sound is instead a rhythm section, it's hardly moving, just this little electric phrase...they don't ever need to move fast. Just this slow, sludge, see saw of a track, tamboure hits until that Beach Fossils sounding chorus guitar comes in. They seem to have found that easy, laid back pop sound. This distortion synth is changing it though like the A-Side getting just a litte bit out of control. Bare Mutants are always leading right towards running off the cliff, bigger and louder than before. Oh yea we did it... and then stopped.

Look close at those heads behind that girl, real creepy.

ON HOZAC!