by John Glab (@glabglabglab_)
Genuineness is the prime moral characteristic that defines Feeble Little Horse. The noisy Pittsburgh quartet consisting of drummer Jake Kelley, bassist Lydia Slocum, and guitarists Seb Kinsler and Ryan Walchonski have stuck to an ethos of controlling every part of the creative process themselves and using it as time they can continue to bond over. This DIY mantra plays through on their new album Girl With Fish with its crushing shoegaze backbone interlaced with elements of sentimentality, it gleams with personality and charisma.
Each track whirls by with only one song clocking in over the three-minute mark. A purposeful decision by the band to keep them concise without defacing them with long, unneeded jam breaks. No single idea is stretched too thin before the band introduces another. On top of this they even cut out the transition tracks that dotted their previous release, Hayday. However, there is still near perfect sequencing between the beginning and end of each piece, so they all flow together in one effortless wave. The album is over before you are ready to let it go and compels you to go through the rapid ride once again after the final track plays.
Searing sonic riffs burst out on tracks like “Steamroller.” Their sustained roar like a pummeling torrent ripping through everything in its path, leaving an enveloping stream of warm, welcoming fuzz to drift away on. Embedded in this sound is the artificial crunch of digital distortion to give it an industrial sting, but there’s many more layers to it than all out fuzzy noisiness. The song “Sweet” shows this depth with glistening guitar parts over Slocum and Kinsler trading lines in the verse. Writhing underneath are constantly moving, plangent undertones, left bare and exposed during the break that slams into the screeching climax of the song. The quick, speaker shattering chord changes on the opening track “Freak” give the song a certain punk like flair. Matched with this is a snarky vocal delivery.
Near the back half of Girl with Fish are folk like moments on the tracks “Slide” and “Healing,” somewhat like “Worth It,” or the trotting opening part to “Grace” on their previous album. There’s a light somberness to these songs, with their acoustic sound, like a lonesome silhouette gliding along a suburban horizon, under the glaze of sunset. Light buzzy synthesizers hover over these tracks like humid air. Brash moments of noise still burst out in sections. The song “Station” plays like a country western with its plucked guitars, and a staggered ring calling out deep in an isolated frontier. It gives the listener this feeling of longing.
A faint, but reoccurring theme with Feeble Little Horse’s music is this feeling of a corrupted nostalgia that permeates through a lot of their songs. This is shown on “Heaven” which opens with this eerie harp like sound. It feels like a nightmare masked as pleasant dream. The next track “Paces” also showcases the sentiment with its MIDI like “la-la” singing guitar lead. The overall playful atmosphere cuts into a sloshy chorus. The vibe of it is a lot like the visual art of Slocum, who designs the bands album covers and t-shirts, with child-like imagery left hazy and dilapidated. Her vocals accentuate this feeling, being presented with a misty tumultuousness. It articulates well the messiness of daily life and navigating through it for an early-20-something-year-old in present times. This chaos seeps into the saccharine nature of the songs.
Girl with Fish is essentially more of what Hayday had to offer, which works out well since Hayday was short, yet so good. Girl with Fish is a quick blissful journey laced with moments of tenderness. Bursting throughout its short runtime are swathes of frenzied, glitched out fuzz and distortion, inherent in any great shoegaze album. It’s music that originates from a group of people having a great time making it, which shows through creating a very enjoyable listening experience.