Dot Dash – Earthquakes & Tidal Waves
Earthquakes & Tidal Waves
Dot Dash
The Beautiful Music, 2015
Dot Dash is wonderfully unexpected and sound like a slice of alt heaven. With sweetly coarse vocals, churning guitars and an aggressive rhythm section, they’ve put together a collection of ten songs blessed with bright pop-ish melodies laced with post punk tunes.
Made up of an underground all star line-up, bassist Hunter Bennett played with indie-rock band Julie Ocean; Singer/guitarist Terry Banks was in The Saturday People, guitarist Steve Hansgen played bass for hardcore legends Minor Threat, and drummer Danny Ingram was a founding member of seminal punk actYouth Brigade. This is a formidable group of players.
“Flowers” has a great 1960’s throwback garage feel right down to the “Ooooh oooh’s” and needs to be classified as the next great earworm. But this could be applied to much of the disc. Terry Banks cool and slightly removed vocal delivery helps bring sharp focus on the stronger lyrical hooks and phrasing.
“Satellite” rocks purposefully, with a wonderful staggered beat, worked into the bridge because they could. Paul Westerburg wishes he still had a song as dismissively hopeful in him as “Tatters.” Entertaining two distinct views at once, the narrator has the hopeful feeling that success is a possibility, and the more wary and expectant view that it will all be futile.
There’s the burly, dark rumble of “Walls Closing In” for those itching for a more aggressive musical turn. The guitar leads come straight out of the Johnny Thunders playbook, but it’s perfect. Any more would have been too much. Dreamy, restrained and frustrated, “Sleep, Sleep” quietly closes the album.
It can be difficult to stress just how sweetly subversive this disc is. Earthquakes & Tidal Waves may very well shove aside the better part of your music collection for a while. A week, or maybe even a month, possibly more, but this fills a need for everyone who wants hooks, a great melody and still needs to rock.
