Harper Kill Ichiban! Their debut EP, A Taste of..., first-press you could even say, is as smooth and refreshing as they come. Hailing from Grand Rapids (and Illinois, because why not have band practice over Zoom- it's the 21st Century for crying outloud!), Haper Kill are one of those bands who can drop a hook that immediately sinks about three inches into the folds of your frontal lobe and makes a home there, burrowing in like a little musical badger, until you either call a doctor to cut it out with a laser, or learn to live with it homsteading on the curveture of your cortex. I'm in the latter camp because after cohabitating with A Taste of... for about a year, I'm starting to wonder what my life was like before it got its catchy little claws into me. For such a young group, they've already coalesced into a very dependable and practiced, classic sorta punk sound- one that gives off unmistakable notes and nods to their influences, without deluding their own distinctive flavor. Take "Death and Taxes," whose churny, buzz-saw surge and anxious circleback approach to building up hooky payoffs obviously couldn't have existed without Green Day having blazed the way for this particular kind of slacker-germinated melody stacking decades prior- still, the actual construction of the song and its premise (praying for death so that you can finally relax and escape the crushing debts and overbearing burdens of modern life) rests on a very sturdy sonic substratum one that is pinned in place by a wry dynamic that is both bitterly earnest and tenderly ironic. Similarly, you could pick up on some Bouncing Souls-esque melo-core croon and riff pile-ups on "Chinese Restaurant," but accompanied by a satirical drag that rolls back the tempo, allowing the riffs and punishment-magnet lyrics to punch well above their assigned weight class. Then there is the sensibly tender drift of the unrequited anguish-bomb "I Swear," the nervy and defiant skate-a'billy bombing run of "Daguerreotype," and whimsical and harsh, power-pop bubble-burster "BLOAT" to cap things off. The whole album has the vibe of a definitive Gilman St band but with the buff-and-scruff of downtrodden midwestern charm that polishes well-worn conventions into genuine rock gems. Just A Taste of Harper Kill is all you need to know that you need more!
Speakermaxxx('d)/The Tape Deck Below (Outcast Tape Infirmary)
