On their debut CD, Red State, Gowns sketch out a vision of what the future of the rock band could be. Their over-the-counter psychedelia draws no lines between acoustic guitars and feedbacked pianos, processed spazzoid drum flails and a cappella harmonies. For the past two years, former Mae Shi vocalist/gunk programmer Ezra Buchla and Amps for Christ guitar-wailer Erika Anderson have brought to the American West Coast a fertile marriage of eerie folk murmur and crushed, twisted electronics. With percussionist Corey Fogel, the sound conjured by Gowns is a digitally ruptured, gospel valentine to the heartlands.
Recorded at home, in bedrooms and basements from rural South Dakota to Los Angeles, Red State tells the story of life lived in the flyover zones. Consider "White Like Heaven," written a year before South Dakota's proposed abortion ban. The confessional lyrical style and woozy, throbbing synths create the ultimate prosaic breakdown, a car crash onto the front lawn of suburban America. On "Rope", Erika's multi-tracked voice emerges like a death-bent Ronettes, haunted by a spectral wall of sound, harmonic mantras repeating in a lilting fuzz bed. "Mercy Springs" has an Earth-style low drone shattered by Buchla's raw screams and Fogel's pent-up kinetic percussion. In these songs, Gowns imagine a nation where psychedelic noise, folk, and electronics can co-exist and breed hybrids better adapted to a dystopian future.
You can't win.
www.myrobobedroom.com
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Red State (CBR 005)
TRACK LISTING
01. Fargo
02. Rope
03. Fake July
04. White Like Heaven
05. When It Burned
06. Subside
07. Clawless
08. Mercy Springs
09. Advice
10. Cherylee
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