by Dan Goldin (@post_trash_)
Sometimes you simply need to embrace the drift, to put caution to the wind and let the open resonance take you where it might. Oakland’s Chris Natividad has spent the better part of the last decade making sharp and spiky post-punk with Marbled Eye, Public Interest, and most recently Aluminum, darting around corners with jerky precision that rattles from a cold distance. Blue Zero, Natividad’s new solo project (turned full band for the live setting), eschews the angularity of his other bands, opting instead for fuzzy beauty and muscular density, pop songs with blistering shoegaze strength and slow dripped melodies. His debut album, Colder Shade Blue, is due out October 11th via Lower Grand Tapes, a collection of sure footed songs that rely on earnest songwriting over glitchy aesthetics or pounding rhythms. Blue Zero arrives well established, a project with a great ear for tone and detail, a focus on driven structures and melancholic pop dissonance.
“Broken By A Glance,” the bent and soaring lead single, provided a great introduction to the band’s sound, thick and syrupy, heavy yet serene. Recalling bands like My Bloody Valentine and Swervedriver (with maybe a touch of Built to Spill lurking beneath the gazey wall of sound), Blue Zero focus in on the meeting point between grit and smoothness, tension and ease. “Scar,” the band’s second single takes a different approach to their sound, moving away from the layered fuzz at times in favor of something more brooding and tangled, veering closer to the post-hardcore art rock sound of Unwound than anything immersed in pedal worship. There’s still plenty of ringing distortion, don’t get me wrong, but everything feels channeled into the juggernaut momentum, slowly gathering weight as Natividad pushes and pulls at the gorgeous framework.