by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
There's very little one would describe as "dreamy" about Gash. It's not the most pleasant word in any context, and the Eau Claire, WI trio are working to live up to the expectations. Their sound isn't necessarily gross or graphically disturbing, but it's definitely rough in places others might go "pretty". Blending together warm, often floating, walls of guitar noise, they take elements of shoegaze and rearrange them with a post-punk ferocity. The band's debut EP, Haha, is out August 10th via Heavy Meadow Records (a label formed by members of Minneapolis' Double Grave), a record full of gnarly guitar tones, slacker vibes, and sharp wit quips. Balancing attitude with bubbling distortion, sweeping washes of effected chord progressions, and piercing attack, it's shoegaze dragged through the mud and left crackling with the energy of an electrical storm.
The song's are snide, Logan Nyberg (guitar/vocals) barking out often mundane observations with a true sense of importance ("I'm never late for work at CVS / it's not the worst but it's not the best") and a familiar near-spoken post-punk style. It's all offered in quick jabs of well focused cynicism over an ever swelling fog, the wall of well-crafted guitar noise and rattling rhythms inching ever closer to annihilation. Their EP fits no mold however, it's dynamic and often blissfully disjointed. "Red Hat" twists itself into a frenzy and winds through calm and chaos, restructuring itself as it goes. The production is pushing toward blown out, without the needle jerking too far, leaving everything enveloped in a sea of guitars that ebb with low tide but crash and rip at all other moments. Riding an enormous sprawl on "Red Hat" really does feel like oceanic changes, and the album's finale "Man Parts Are Scary" is the perfect companion, an upbeat song that retains the weariness and atmosphere of their fuzz onslaught in a new light, one that has been through the storm and arrived victorious. Damp... but victorious all the same. It's a great debut, one that has the band showing patience and unpredictability, balanced with a knack for bone shattering distortion.
Gash's Haha is out August 10th via Heavy Meadow Records.