by Dan Paoletti (@BeeSideTapes)
There’s something fun happening out there in the post-punk realm. A crossover with the borderline twee world of collegiate art-pop is happening as a second wave of fully online rockers takes control of the discourse. Bands like Youbet, pop serum into their artsy post-punk, a genre perhaps more widely regarded as a crash pad for dark and brooding misanthrope types. While the sunny side of North American post-punk is well-trodden territory (the B-52s and Talking Heads come to mind as obvious progenitors), this current influx of artists bring an updated grand theory of driving drums and angular guitars.
Brooklyn band Foyer Red take the sonic building blocks of contemporary post-punk and art-rock — the time signature changes, the overlapping vocal parts, the stingingly high toned chorused guitars, the sweep picking, the woodwind instruments, the propulsive and forceful drumming, the jam block — and use them as a foil against their obvious inclination towards “gee wiz” style pop songwriting. Droning incantations give way to showcase vocal harmonies; high vibrato guitar leads like something from a 50s surf record morph into laser-like bursts of noise; rhythmically intense sections with driving drums and chugging tom hits become gentle, almost nervous indie rock ballads complete with clarinet solos, Omnichord, and vocal hocketing. The results evoke bygone DIY favorites like Wilt, Thelma, and Really Big Pinecone interpreting the classics by Deerhoof and Dirty Projectors.
There’s something still more current about Foyer Red’s sound. There’s moments when the harmonies could have more conceivably been lifted from Backstreet Boys than Brian Wilson, when the lead vocal sounds convincingly like Hoku or Gwen Stefani, where fun-time vocal harmonies and midcentury pop vibe becomes so thick that it resembles something from the Disney channel. It’s not that these songs share an aesthetic (much less an ethos) with these points of reference; the sonics always remain squarely in the world of current-day DIY basement rock, but the influence of material from the early 2000s subtly seeps through in a testament to the band’s self-professed “case of the zoomies.” This is a roundabout way of saying that the record has been made by some exciting young creators with a clear vision to update post-punk for Gen Z.
Part of the genesis of this revamped sound comes from the collaboration between band members and spontaneity of their songwriting process. A defiant kind of joy comes through the recording, making sure no particular moment lasts too long or wears out its welcome as if maintaining a newfound joy in exploration and experimentation, which keeps vitality and dynamics in the tracks. What they may lack in groove they make up for with tight interlocking rhythms in odd meters that frequently interrupt otherwise straightforward pop arrangements, by shifting seamlessly between tempos within the same song, and with bursts of raw noise and flamboyant energy. They can, at times, sound like they’re playing catch up to their own ideas, but never without charm.