by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
We’ve been awaiting the return of Kansas City’s Silicone Prairie, the shapeshifting punk band led by Ian Teeple. He’s been exceedingly busy since the release of 2021’s My Life on the Silicone Prairie introduced the sound of his solo project, one that feels conceptually loose but played with a taut cohesion. In the years since, he’s done artwork for countless bands, designing record covers, posters, and t-shirts alike, while simultaneously finding himself as the latest addition to Nashville’s Snõõper, one of few bands capable of matching his own creative energy. The Silicone Prairie debut set a strange benchmark, an album that felt like brilliantly scattered thoughts brought to life, and things are only getting (delightfully) weirder on Vol. II. Due out July 28th via Feel It Records (It Thing, Sweeping Promises, Private Lives), it’s the type of album where anything feels possible. Teeple is rarely content to stay in one place musically, happy to blur genre lines in the favor of great songs, skipping between glam-soaked power-pop, twitchy lo-fi disco, swooning bedroom prog exuberance, and of course post-punk at it’s most artistic. It’s a tremendous record of ideas layered and manipulated, with shimmering songwriting the glue that binds it.
“Serpent In The Grass” is the record’s lead single and album opener, a song that flutters around at hyperspace speeds, sounding something like a cassette caught in fast-forward. It’s probably one of the more “straight forward” punk songs on the record, but there’s little “straight forward” about it, as the song grunts and sputters its way into buried guitar solos that sound like an animal crying out, synths that warble their way off steep edges, and drums that shred through it all. With Teeple’s vocals taking on a unwieldy melody reminiscent of Tom Verlaine, there’s so much going on that it takes a few listens to make sense of it all, the song presenting itself as a voyage for your senses through the band’s own animal kingdom. The video, directed and edited by Carrie Wallen, finds Teeple surrounded by pals… pals that are far too eager to see his demise.