Snowden--Anti-Anti

The debut LP from Snowden, a quartet from Atlanta, Anti-Anti is a mish-mash of indie rock, dance-floor beats, and shoegaze ethereality. Right from the get-go in “Like Bullets” Snowden dabbles in alternating drum and bass beats that ride the narrow edge of collapse with perpendicular vocals. It should all rightfully fall apart, the bass should fall off-beat or the vocals should become muddled, but instead Snowden craft a track with so many driving pulses your feet won’t know quite what to do. The album’s namesake “Anti-Anti” follows a similar pattern, layering in different guitar riffs with the vocals and bass and drums in a confounded mess that somehow shapes out into a damnably catchy tune. Snowden achieves clear pop hits in “Between the Rent and Me” and “Black Eyes,” both being very accessible and nearly ready for the dance floor. Shoegaze influences ring through as well, peppering the songs with heavily-effected guitar riffs crafting towering sonic landscapes, like My Bloody Valentine pumped through with way too much bass. Indeed, these tracks are very similar to Radiohead (even Thom Yorke’s The Eraser) or The Arcade Fire (again, with more bass added). Some tracks like “Filler Is Wasted” tend to pound away at the ears, and may cause some headaches, but the majority of the album is explosive bass-driven ethereal pulsations that are just as much indie rock as they are dance mixes.

(Published at ComfortComes.com)