The way I encountered Olso's Dark Times was while traveling down a click-hole on Youtube trying to find more bands like Wolf Alice back in 2015. This would align them with the revolt of feminine-coded punk and garage revival that gained ground during the late Obama years* in my personal headcanon of rock and roll history. They are also distinguished by a darkly ironic detachment that wouldn't hit the indie rock circuit at full speed until Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus sprouted out from Boygenuis into separate and successful solo careers. As a result, Dark Times's 2018 album Tell Me What I Need ends up being a living thread, a throbbing vein that runs through and conjoins Tacocat and Mommy Long Legs sneering, scrappy, girl-gang pop-punk and the removed "sad rock" of the aforementioned Boygenuis crowd.
Now, I have no idea if this is how Dark Times view themselves. Like I said, I discovered them via algorithm so take my assessment with a spoon full of good old-fashioned internet skepticism. One of the reasons why I feel like I need to hedge my bets here is because I don't trust algorithgems, but also because my very first impression of Dark Time's Tell Me What I Need was that they were doing a sweetened-up version of Dance with Me era TSOL for young millennials who just discovered the Wombats. Excuse me for saying, but that sounds much crazier than what I am dubbing my "official" opinion on the matter in the previous paragraph. I'm allowing context to be my guide here, even if it's directing me to take a right turn into a pond.
One of the more forward aspects of Dark Times sound, and what is throwing me off a bit, is their favoring of a chugging style of guitar playing and warp-speed tempos that are highly reminiscent of late '80s / early '90s West-coast skate punk, an aggressive but playful style which gives form to nimble displays of spirit shattering dismay. A tandem ride of adolescent and nervy energy and a practiced brooding, distant posture- the last gasp of that era of bright pessimism that characterized the '10s movement towards tipping over into the guarded separation of a simmering rage.
The mostly jagged "Blazing" has its layers of confection to it, but is steeling at its core, with an engine fueled by swinging desert rock riffs that feels too hot to touch with your bare hands. Similarly, "Take It In" attacks the senses as perilously overdriven, like it's riding on a mountainous coast while playing chicken with the knife's edge of an outcropping cliff. Later, the downer slither of "Pinhole" sounds like a funeral march led by a procession of stoic vampires, and it shares a sense of concentrated dread with the pugnacious poltergeist raising "Haunt the Dead."
The most relevant track, both now, and for the period that the album debuted in**, is easily the first, "Doom and Bloom." The title says a lot for this number, but its grooves say more, with guitar lines that will run through you like a line of razorwire caked in taffy, accented by painfully delicious sything hooks that will lift you into a spin-dry like wet newspaper caught in a hurricane. The most penetrating aspect of the song though, are the lyrics, which hit me like a bolt from a watch tower- the lead vocalist emoting in a bleating, scampering cadence, amongst a rock slide of guitar feedback seemingly conjured to burying her voice. Against this flood of earth and sound, she shouts, "It's not going to be alright, It's not going to be fine!" Her voice ushering forth with a smirk, as if her life didn't depend on every word she coughs out from between her teeth. Continuing in this fashion, she describes the creeping dread around her, a consuming calamity of descending shadows.
While it's clear that the vocalist is bracing herself for a monstrous impact, there is also a piercing optimism to her defiance and a sense that she is hard enough, sharp enough, to pierce through the wall of destruction that is rushing towards her- that there is life on the other side of what seems like certain death. If this song doesn't feel relevant to you today, then I don't know what planet you're living on. For all of our sakes, I hope her credence cuts true. Get ready, friend, because we're about to find out.
Find it on Sheep Chase Records