That’s not to say there aren’t good performances on here, but thanks to Southpaw, and earlier HoZac the Sheaths are regaling unwitting listeners with music that’s been made and remade for something like fifty years.
What’s even more disappointing is after that first track – “Gloves / Mutations” – it’s all downhill. The opener, though, takes the thrasiest rock drums possible, marries it to a pretty simple, but steady bassline allowing for the main guitar figure to grind its way through the fuzz pedal and into your ear holes. It’s really actually quite a magical two minute composition and should make listeners eager to hear more. The ‘more,’ though, is just wrote, revved up garage stuff, the same as anything coming out of the Bay, which is beyond boring and repetitive at this point.
It’s surprising that the band wasn’t able to apply the same formula working on that opening track to other works here. The vocals seem perfectly buried, but even on the following track, everything’s in focus and more crisp. There’s a bit of harmonizing on “Everything is Contagious,” hardly on par with Grass Widow and the like. It’s not a bummer, just kinda boring and feels reeled in compared to that opening half instrumental track.
By Get On Your Nerves’ third track, “Half-Wit,” all bets are off and really, the record should be as well. Sure, that trebly guitar solo works out pretty well, but the rest of the song’s something akin to a high school rock band getting some back up singers – let’s not get into that really loud flubbed note either. Yeah, it’s indie-garage, but still…
Anyway, the rest of the disc moves in and out of passable fidelity, purposefully of course. And while the more obscure each vocal gets, the better. But what the Sheaths would most benefit from would be pulling back on the detailed lyric stuff - it’s gotta be hard to fit lyrics from “Large Haddron Collider” into a sensible lyrical line. Whatever, it’s not awful, just a bit more of the same.