How many of you make use of the iTunes rating stars when you listen to music? You know what I mean, right? The five star icons you can click on, marking how much you like something. Any of you do that? I do, particularly on days when I’m listening to 3-4 different new albums. It is an easy shortcut for remembering how much you liked a record. If you have a handful of 4-star tracks, it was probably good. If there aren’t any, well, it probably isn’t worth going back to, at least not when you have dozens of other options.
Every so often – and it is more rare than I wish it would be – you give an album an initial listen and, after it ends and you look back to see what you thought, you realize you gave stars to more songs than you didn’t. This infrequent and wonderful discovery is exactly the kind I had after hearing the new release from New York’s The Octagon. The other night, when a friend was over and we were talking about new music we’d been digging, I told her about this new Octagon release and then made her listen – swear to god – to seven different tracks from it. Obnoxious, I know, but fortunately for me, the band makes such a tyrannical move actually enjoyable, and when I finally finished, she asked me to play the one with the glancing Nirvana reference (“Hound Adams”) again.
Full of sloppy and casually exuberant post-punk grooves, comparable to The Black Lips but not so psychedelic or contrived, Warm Love and Cool Dreams Forever is packed with sixteen solid tracks, all but three sub-three minutes and a good half-dozen I’d feel plenty confident placing on a mixtape for a (sadly hypothetical) hip and coy romantic interest. All of the songs are imbued with a garage-style sense of limitlessness, taking me back to when I first listed to pre-Dookie Green Day albums. The sounds is totally different, of course, but that same sense of adventure and loosely constrained melody is the same.
Where the song structures are loose, however, the lyrics are frequently taut. I wouldn’t call The Octagon a literary band, or even a verbose one, but they do a good job of saying what they want to say in a way that is as catchy as it is pithy and to the point (For evidence, consider the following: Exhibit #1 – “Radio Days”; Exhibit #2: – “Clew Haywood”; Exhibits 3-16 – every other track on the record). My guess is, part of that skillful wordsmithing can be credited to band member Zach Mexico, whose written work has received acclaim in other arenas, particularly with the publication of his 2009 book, China Underground, recently reissued in a second printing by celebrated independent publisher Soft Skull Press.
Taken together, the crisp writing and the nonchalant recklessness of the vocals create a credible lo-fi approach that is only enhanced by the trio’s handiness with a melodic hook. The album opener, “Suicide Kings,” provides perfect foreshadowing of what follows, with loose guitar work, thuggish drums, and vocals that swerve back and forth across the time signature. While the stereotypical three-chord delight is in full effect there and on many other tracks throughout Warm Love and Cool Dreams Forever, other songs take a significantly different approach. “Swindler Minnows” has a fuzzy Brit sound, while “Radio Days” has a deceptively cool 90s radio-friendly ska vibe. The band’s direct influences are more evident on other tracks, with “To The Flame” clearly harkening early 90s Flaming Lips, while “Easton” calls to mind Weezer’s Pinkerton. Most songs, though, bear The Octagon’s distinct style, which reminds me of nothing else, other than perhaps promising underage up-and-comers The Zookeepers. Stand-out tracks like “Cross Tops,” “Suicide Kings,” “Clew Haywood,” and “Hound Adams” dominate this particularly category.
The Octagon’s third album, Warm Love and Cool Dreams Forever, dropped on January 5th via Serious Business Records. You can buy the record here and download a free EP, Arm Brain Heart & Liver, here.
