Lazy Legs are a shoegaze/noise pop band from Chicago, and back in January the band released their début self-titled EP. The trio – Laura Wagner and Michael Tenzer who share vocal duties and handle bass and guitar respectively, plus Nicholas Piontek on Drums – create a heavy mix of shoegaze and noise pop, a million miles from the sugary sweet jangle at the other end of the genre’s spectrum. The harsh, feedback-heavy guitar and slapped drums on ‘Heart Destroyer’ give way to cooing vocals of Wagner and Tenzer, a sort of ghostly float that couldn’t juxtapose the music more if it tried, before the whole thing ends in a manic clatter.
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Second track ‘Molasses’ is as slow and syrupy as the title suggests, with its heavy guitars and the gauzy, pervading vocals, the song devolving into crushing noise rock before the close. ‘Lipstick Prick’ has another speaker-destroying opening and soft and airy wordless vocals, before hitting lulls that feel like the eye of a storm, when the song morphs into the closest thing on the release to a sweet slice of shoegazey pop. Finale, ‘Ghost’, rises from a period of almost-silence, slower and more considered than the other tracks, all slow thud of beating percussion and whalesong whine of guitars.
If all that sounds like your kind of fun, then you can get the Lazy Legs EP from the band’s Bandcamp page.