The nineties are back, just look at many of the bands and artists of the last couple of years like Boygenius, Bully, Momma, Alvvays, Wet Leg, The Beths… But, in case anyone hadn’t heard, here they are Wednesday to make it very clear with his latest album, “Rat Saw God”. Of course, if this is just a ‘revival’, what is it that makes them so special? At the beginning of that decade there was no band that mixed wild distortions with pedal steel and ‘twang’ country; Second, any band that delivered a record with so many good songs on it would end up being praised, whether it sounded like the nineties, the seventies or the 2000s, whether it was indie rock (as is the case), disco, ambient or rumba.
The point is that “Rat Saw God” It does not take us by surprise either, his advances had already set off the alarm that something big was cooking. First came, last year, the fantastic “Bull Believer”an epic song of more than eight minutes that sounded like a lost classic from 1993, a noise rock/grunge savagery that veered in new directions throughout its long length, guitar slams, quieter passages in the long bridge (to which noisy explosions attacked) and a heartrending finale where screams, distorted guitars and a distant pedal steel mixed together creating a kind of sound translation of Munch’s scream.
Of course, more clarifying of the sound of this band was the following single, “Chose To Deserve”, a very rock riff mixed with a beautiful pedal steel, this time, in the foreground, then an acoustic and the main melody, embellished by that country guitar until they lead us to that riff that almost serves as an instrumental chorus. The fact is that they don’t sound like country rock, or American, but like independent rock, that is, they don’t come from Uncle Tupelo so much as from Pavement. Although Karly Hartzman’s successful lyrics are the most American and southern part of the album, even more so than pedal steel.
And that has become a reality listening to this “Rat Saw God” in full, showing that the band has a personal sound, despite being so rooted in the alternative rock of the nineties, and, above all, that it has great songs, beyond its first two acclaimed advances. Just hear things like “Got Shocked”, “TV On The Gas Pump”, “Hot Rotten Grass Smell”which is like the little sister of “Bull Believer”, “Bath County”, where they sound like some southern The Breeders, or “Quarry”, another of the jewels in the crown, the song with which they have decided to present the album, and I am not surprised because it is the most charming melody they have, rounded off by its catchiest chorus. But also in quieter songs like the pretty one “Formula One”a song that could be worth comparisons with Big Thief.
The result is excellent, a powerful alternative rock album with its own personality and great songs within, one that could even get this band to recover their name and that by typing it they would get something more than a gothic teenager dancing to the rhythm of The Cramps…