by Shane O’Malley Firek
There’s nothing more terrifying than the prospect that all music is heading through the bottleneck of pop and the silkscreen of 21st century production sheen. The studio experience can be packaged in your Macbook. Your whole record can be quantized, smashed with compression, vocals fixed with Auto-tune, sliced and diced into the final, perfect product. Things are expected to come quicker, easier and simpler, and this immediacy does not escape the expectations placed on artists today.
Blood is a septet from Austin, TX who have cemented themselves as a live staple in their own prospective scene as well as abroad, with two national tours under their belts. Their shows are dynamically rich and cathartic, which translates wholly into their debut EP, Why Wait Till ’55, We Might Not Even Be Alive.
All five songs collected here were cut live by the full band with no overdubs, and the immediacy of this is clear in the mix. The record was recorded at Cacophany Recorders by Erik Wofford (Bill Callahan, My Morning Jacket, Okkervil River) over a period of three days in fall 2019. Each of these act's influence can be felt here, and kudos to Wofford for handling seven players in a room and crafting a solid sonic palate for these songs to leap out of the speakers.
“Intro” gives you a taste of everything that is to come, from the dissonant guitar interplay of brothers Julian and Ben McCamman McGinnis, the heavy handling of the rhythm section by Nino Soboren’s bass and Tyler Wolff’s drumming, the patient padding of the outro by keyboardist Caleb Parker and the bombast of trumpeter Zach Malett. At the center, Tim O’Brien sings, screams, begs and harkens.
“Primitive Priest” carries a propulsion that feels like Fugazi on all cylinders. O’Brien is lyric focused and in all of the madness and energy, these words are clear. “You’re no martyr/You’re just marred”. “Genesis” follows and is full of space. “I wasn’t allowed to hold my nephew/At the christening” is echoed by Cap’n Jazz or Q And Not U influenced guitar work, showing off Blood’s trademark: showing you something familiar in the hurricane. They have an uncanny knack for balancing chaos and melody, and the sequence of this record shows off this intention. When “Progeny” begins with a trumpet and immediately segues into a harrowing, whammied guitar, the point is expressed again.
The record ends with “Anthropocene,” sung by O’Brien over a sole piano. He sings, languished, “I have to add/to the canon of love”. There are so many peaks, so many valleys, the only thing to be said at the end of this review is this: listen to this record.