The Sofas are an indie rock band from Brooklyn whose sound occupies a space between slacker garage rock and the post-punk wit. Their latest album, Chop Water, draws together these influences into a style that feels at once tight and expansive, the atmosphere honed with craft and care yet allowed to roam with a playful and at times unsettling energy.
With its upbeat tempo and bright feel, opener ‘Nothing Major’ tends toward the Pavement end of the spectrum, the pace of the instrumentation countered by the hip detachment of the vocals. That said, the track rises into a squealing crescendo suggestive of what’s to come, and the fact that the record was mixed by Bill Skibbe (who also works with Protomartyr) begins to make sense.
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‘Hum’ follows a similar trend, sunny garage rock distorted by deranged guitars, before ‘Dimes’ switches into a more acerbic tone, the spoken word delivery dripping with a kind of ironic detachment. “I can be present,” goes the straight-faced snigger of a refrain, “I can be clear,” lending an air of biting critique to every word. The song gets to the heart of The Sofas sound, the kind of two-tone style that not only has you guessing exactly what the song is meant to represent, but also feels culturally relevant and timely.
Tracks such as ‘Alona’ and ‘Word Perfect’ push right into post-punk territory, any surviving elements of the slacker rock vibe forced to fight their way through a discordant tumult, while others like the great ‘Feels Like Everything Is Happening’ slouch into frame like some looming behemoth.
The ethereal ‘Keep Pass Turn Again’ has more than a flavour of shoegaze, though again the guitars jumble and fray as though threatening to unravel the very song itself, before closer ‘Lou Thesz Press’ arrives as something of a summation or realisation of all that came before. Clocking in at six and a half minutes, the track opens with a carefree garage rock flow that grows and grows into a wall of sound—a soaring, triumphant climax to cap off the release.
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Chop Water is out now via Jurassic Pop Records and you can get it from Bandcamp.
