by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
I don’t know a whole lot about the band called Richard Vain but the first song on the upcoming Night Jammer album, “Tremors” is as essential as they come. Blending together garage, psych, krautrock, and art-punk, their warped vision continues throughout the album over a dynamic course of big and heavy, hypnotic and focused. Led by Jered Gummere (The Ponys, Bare Mutants), the band truly dart between sounds, the blistering guitar distortion and motorik rhythms working together throughout Night Jammer to pull you in, tractor beam-style. There are unruly rippers (“Ratz”), romantic-era post-punk/shoegaze "(“Castles”), and big garage punk shout-alongs (“Tar Pits”) that slam themselves headfirst into wall, no questions asked.
Richard Vain are here to have a good, scuzzy, time and there’s nothing that will stand in that way. As they burn down the mainstream with Stooges charisma and primal repetition that offers dissociative wandering, the trio never feel bogged down by genre and they traverse from the path on several occasions. It’s all locked in and blanketed with syrupy guitar bliss, but the shapes have changed and Night Jammer does just that.
Richard Vain’s Night Jammer is out December 7th via Big Neck Records.