by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Kalamazoo’s Moss Jaw are set to release, Embody, their debut album on April 26th via Already Dead Tapes and Records (Dead Tenants, Complainer, Hard Job), quite possibly the busiest record label in the world (this is release 307). The band’s music has a slower elemental sort of quality to it, the quartet knotting together in a blanket of tranquility and soft atmosphere. Everything drifts into place, settling in, and moving forward just as soon. With the band previewing a pair of songs on their own Bandcamp, we’re excited to premiere the record’s first “official” single, the powerful and serene “Twigs and Stems.”
Opening with a delightfully polyrhythmic shuffle and a wide stretched bass line, the guitars come bopping in with a staccato riff that’s damn near funky, though the essence is closer to folk-tinged post-hardcore or emo-adjacent space rock than anything else. Guitarist/vocalist Kayley Kerastas has a strong voice, maneuvering between casual melodies and more drawn out hooks that push the warble of the verses into tension. The whole song see-saws around shifting structures, Evan Asher’s complex drum pattern leading the way into a calm oblivion for the band.