Unicycle Loves You
The Dead Age
Reviewed by: Ari Roth
Unicycle Loves You’s The Dead Age is a wonderful exploration of the barbed-wire reverb, trebly, damaged thickets of distorted guitar, and melancholic, nasal vocals of classic noise pop and early shoegaze. Their sound is reference-heavy, but still vital and often thrilling, imbued with a garage rock energy that sets them apart from their sludgier, gothier predecessors, such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and early My Bloody Valentine. Of particular note is the production, handled by Bob Weston, best known as the bassist for ultra-austere noise rock legends Shellac. His engineer skills lend a physicality and bone-dry sonic force to these songs, even at their most dense and reverb-drenched.
The stylistic and sonic cohesion of the album means that it occasionally becomes a little too uniform in sound and approach, but for the most part the songwriting elevates each individual song from being lost in the all-form-no-content haze that so often plagues bands of this kind. And despite the near-cliche garage rock song titles such as “Suicide Pizza” and “Endless Bummer”, Unicycle Loves You are worthy outliers in that world, with exquisitely emotive, downcast melodies and a gorgeously noisy ensemble sound on highlights such as opener “Falling Off” and the buzzy guitar leads of “JAWS”. There are also a number of tracks that deviate from the established formula, including the near-ambient, delayed and loop-heavy interlude “Silent Minus” and the spacious ballad “Any Daydreaming Morning”. The second half of the album is less hook-heavy and immediate, but it culminates in the title track, the longest song on the album and one of its best. It’s a stormy, intense multi-part song that encompasses dark, ragged Wipers-esque guitar leads and powerful vocals, riding them to a dynamic peak and then collapsing into lingering feedback to close the album. This is the band’s fourth album and it rings with both assured, careful composition and youthful abandon. I highly recommend it.
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