Weekend – Sports
There’s breathtaking simplicity to the noise genre (or so some would have you believe). Either way, its name is descriptive, accurate and succinct. More often that not these days it’s complementary too. Weekend , as a band name, is more anonymous, but their debut Sports is anything but. This is indie rock where indie still means independent, the stress is on rock – that rock is loud – and the whole lot is fuzzed out to hell.
Galloping on relatively simple guitar and drumming, “Coma Summer” comes buzzed out to 11 (think My Bloody Valentine ‘s own jet engine), and with Shaun Durkan ‘s best exercise in disinterest echoing out atop the squall. Yet, though it might take an attuned ear to get it, it’s the closely-guarded melody in the band’s maelstrom that pleases most.
Though “Youth Haunts” then appears to struggle in terms of originality – its post-punk bass work certainly suggests at Joy Division – it has dissonance levels enough to make A Place To Bury Strangers blush. This comparison is later compounded on the pummelling “Age Class”, and, along with regular overloading of equipment, these concessions allow for Sports to keep fresh.
As such, these San Franciscans continue to impress throughout. “End Times” bubbles once more with post-punk bass and a low-in-the-mix, back-and-forth vocal that more than brings Sonic Youth to mind. The change of pace in “Veil”, which also peels back a few levels of static, as well as in the crushingly epic-sounding “Monday Morning” provides welcome, reverbed variety, and some might say respite. The latter’s vocal melody is then reprised and comes to a head during the anthemic blow-out in “Monongah, WV”.
Just as Dinosaur Jr showed, just as Japandroids more recently did too, noisy enthusiasm is infectious. And, with a vision borrowed from Sonic Youth’s Goo, Sports culminates with “Untitled”. It runs with heavily sludged guitars, borrows No Age’s wind tunnel for recording purposes and daubs on enough feedback to induce pity for the equaliser.
What they lack in band, album and track name, Weekend more than make up for in raw sonics. Indispensable.
Advised downloads: “Monongah, WV” and “Untitled”.
~Sports is out now on Slumberland .~