by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
The extent of our background knowledge in regards to BRICK HEAD’s new record comes exclusively in the text on the album’s cover art. The production credits, and brief ones at that, are about all we know about Bricks For Brains, that… and the fact that we can’t stop listening to it, which is really all you need to know. Having listened to it on repeat since it’s release back on May 6th, it’s the type of album that rips with its own sonic simplicity, building a very specific world with the songs and making a home in that sound. For as much background as we can provide, BRICK HEAD is the Melbourne/Naarm based solo project of Sarah Hardiman, a prolific guitarist/vocalist best known for her bands Deaf Wish, Nightclub, Moon Rituals, LOU, and beyond. Each band she’s been in offers a different look into her creative output, spanning a wide range between agitated slacker noise punk (Deaf Wish), motorik JAMC indebted wall of sound psych (Nightclub), meditative slow burnt instrumentals (LOU), and indie pop swoon (Moon Rituals). Then there’s BRICK HEAD…
The project began during the pandemic lockdown, seemingly as our brains were turning to mush (or bricks), Hardiman found inspiration is “nasty” guitars, feeling the urge to create “dumb” punk songs with one rule, don’t over think them. It worked, and while the recordings were spontaneous, the result of Thick as Bricks, her 2020 debut proved to be something special. It’s noisy, obnoxious, and insistent, but also fairly brilliant. There’s an undeniable garage rock appeal to it, with a raw intensity and a melted sense of melody. It’s an escape into swarming riffs, a momentary lapse where we turn off our brains and allow ourselves to be swallowed whole. After three years, Hardiman (who has certainly been busy) returns with Bricks For Brains, keeping a similar aesthetic in sound and vision of her debut, but expanding subtly into the outer realms of cosmic boogie.
Bricks For Brains continues to tear into blown out lo-fi garage rock and proto-punk, but everything feels as though it’s been dripped in acid. There’s a transfixing pull to Hardiman’s guitars, sucking us in like tractor beams and spitting us back out, our minds scrambled and rearranged. It’s not the heaviest or the grooviest psych punk out there, but it’s perfectly in tune with its own tonality, it’s washed and warbling production, and the unshakable sense of momentum it carries with it. Everything about Bricks For Brains is engaging on surface level. You don’t need access to a bio, press release, or lyrics to understand that point of BRICK HEAD. The record plays out like an homage to a sound, an unfiltered exploration of kinetic garage punk hypnosis with a definitive DIY mindset.
With guitars layered on but still retaining a minimalist sound, there’s a relentless forward push to each riff, whether wiggling its way forward or sprinting at full speed, Hardiman is finding her riff and letting it spiral. Songs like “Fight II,” a tale of stagnation leading to aggression and “Unlikely Motherfucker,” a song that seems to resist change, each surge with a rhythm guitar that bleeds like an ink spill and a wiry lead guitar that rips and weaves a trail of fuzz in its wake. What the record lacks in sonic diversity it embraces in fluid vision, as Bricks For Brains evolves upon a theme and pushes it to an extreme. These are laid back punk rippers, but rippers all the same, with tough hooks (“Outta Your System”), incessant acid fried wonders (“Fun II"), and blistered garage pop mutations (“Shadow”).
These songs tear into repetition, the thick layer of guitar fuzz drawn across the pavement like the ooze from a slug. The beats keep the pace. The vocals bolster the melodic charms, but everything congeals together into a torched and smoldering haze of lo-fi rock ‘n’ roll glory, warts and all (it’s in the warts that we really begin to appreciate the sound).