by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
Some bands were born to write the song of the summer–others, like Enumclaw, were destined for the album of autumn. As Aramis Johnson sings on “Park Lodge,” from the Tacoma four-piece’s impeccable debut Save the Baby: “Where I’m from, dreams aren’t made / on a sunny day.” Hazy guitars settle like a sweater, drums hit crisp as fallen leaves, and the ambient ennui of the Pacific Northwest reigns in wobbling filters. “There’s this innate yearning in music from people from Washington that I think is an effect of the hardships you have to go through to live in a place as beautiful as this,” Johnson mused in an interview with SPIN. Guitarist Nathan Cornell added: “It’s like you can smell the rain on it or something.”
On record, Johnson gets deeply vulnerable about the hardships he’s faced–losing his father at a young age, seeing everything his mother endured to take care of the family ("You don't know what it's like to watch your mother sleep on a couch"), and coping with the gulf between where he’s been and where the music could take him (see the bonfire-ready acoustic closer, “Apartment”). For every feint toward nostalgia and escapism (like titling a song “Cowboy Bebop”) Enumclaw grapples that much harder with long-deferred dreams of musical greatness–hear the raw, pent-up angst in Johnson’s overdriven harmony layers on “2002,” or his less-than-certain “It’s gonna be alright” refrain on “Park Lodge.” Producer Gabe Wax makes it all the more beautiful and stark, sharpening up the sound of the band’s early demos without sacrificing their stylized, pre-millenial aesthetic.
The distinctive vocals hearken back to Pavement, but reading about Enumclaw, it’s hard not to think about a more emotive 90s band with a single-minded drive to be the biggest, best version of themselves–I am of course referring to The Smashing Pumpkins. (Who were you expecting?) Save the Baby’s crowning achievement, the shoegazey single “Jimmy Neutron,” draws on the aching, youthful restlessness of “1979” in its especially rain-flecked romance. You can feel ears turning red, and maybe not just from the wind, when the riff first sweeps in. Like the ill-fated relationship at the song’s center, the progression proves so cider-sweet the band can’t help revisiting it one last time after the feedback-laden fake-out ending.
Enumclaw doesn’t always have the hooks of their alt-rock predecessors, but their world-conquering spirit is undeniable–this is a band with no shortage of hard-won heart to back up their much-discussed rockstar ambition. Nothing beats the level of faith in the life-changing stakes of art that makes you want to bellow “That’s the take!” at the top of your lungs in the studio, as Johnson does on the outro to the title track.