by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
It’d be easy to mistake Buice’s sophomore album as an uplifting one based on its title. To consider it a promise to the viewer of better tomorrows, when it's more an acknowledgment that right now there is no sun on the horizon only darkness. This is not an album of hope because these are rarely hopeful times, rather Buice’s aim seems to be catharsis by way of some of the most inventive noise rock this year. Their sound is a hurricane of angular guitars, crushing bass, and rapid-fire drums, with bass player/lead singer Hayden Locke's voice echoing out across the storm, his lyrics carrying equal parts anger and grief.
Modern life isn’t merely rubbish but brutal and Buice’s response is brutal in turn. Singles “The Sun” and “Windy” play with similar dynamics of a verse-chorus structure hitting a false stop to make way for some kaleidoscopic feat of noisenik theatrics. In practice they contrast each other perfectly, “The Sun” transforming into a crushing high-speed skronk fest whilst “Windy” takes on an almost transcendent tone of rising guitar solos given momentum by the machine gun-like drumming of Robert Lloyd. The two tracks highlight the core of what makes One Day You’ll See The Sun such an engaging listen, the band's incredible sense of control and dynamics. It is this raw dynamism that helps them stand out in the ever-growing noise-rock crowd, an acrobatic ability to not merely keep up with their dramatic shifts in tempo and terror with a liquid smoothness but to keep the songs running at a tight and obliterating speed.
This tightness gives even the album's slower moments an uncanny tension. Opener “Crooked Girl” carries a creeping lurch, Locke’s vocals seething with restrained mania. His menacing croon is reminiscent of a Birthday Party era Nick Cave before bursting into screaming hysterics. Elsewhere on “Untitled,” the band's noirish punk blues soundscape feels like a haunted house. The near-whispered voice of guest vocalist Karina Teichert carries a menacing melancholia that climaxes into an apocalyptic screech fest like a version of Floyd’s “Great Gig in The Sky” where the stage has plummeted down to hell. These moodier moments paint the surrounding landscape as a wasteland of shattered dreams. The songs come together as a catalogue of minor obliterations that build into a destructive symphony.
Yet One Day You’ll See The Sun isn’t a particularly melancholic listen, the serrated interplay of guitarists Jack Pace and Josh Rubin tearing the ruins open to reveal the lurid gold hidden within. It’s a sense of finding new horrors beyond the decay that makes Buice so fresh and interesting. At once recalling the Touch and Go greats of old but bringing a distinct sense of youth and energy to those labels’ rotten wisdom. The moments of sludgy doom on classic 90’s noise rock/post-hardcore records are now replaced by At The Drive-In esque math rock and prog tendencies. The guitarists combined work bringing back the noise and chaos of the old but with added complexity and dynamism. Similarly, while Locke’s voice may invite comparisons to the howling mania of David Yow or the brutal misery of Raygun Busch, his lyrics and vocals still feel distinct. On “Grifter” his delivery switches to a rapid-fire mode, chanting a picture of urban blues that transforms into the cutting mantra of “I know that you hate yourself/I know that you hate self-wealth,” the repeated blasts of “I know” landing like nails in the coffin, his message hammered so hard home that its burst through the foundations.
Within all this rage is a keen ear for catharsis. Buice is a young band, one whose music appears as a reaction to the failure of futures promised. Despite the moments of grief, the group seems determined to rise above the wreckage and deliver one last blast of sonic carnage. This constant push and pull between rage and grief mirrors the album's instrumental duals and playfulness to find a sort of bizarre joy in its apocalyptic landscape. This isn’t a harrowing album per se but rather an oddly rousing one. When Locke repeats the phrase “I am Mothman” on the closing tracks of the same name there’s a sense of transcendence, as if with enough riffs and breakdowns you can fly above the rubble and bask in the sunlight.