REVIEW: Eat Skull - III

As a self-appointed music writer, I'm careful to remind myself that as much as a learn, there is much I don't know about the current indie scene, and faking knowledge is a fool's game.  So I'll admit at the beginning of this post that I was unfamiliar with a group from a few hours south of here -- Eat Skull of Portland, Oregon.  And that unfamiliarity probably contributed to my failure to review the album III before February 19, which is the day it was released by Woodsist.  Happily, I remembered the album and listened to it carefully this week, and even more happily, I think that III is an excellent album.  I've read descriptions of the band's music as noise pop, lo-fi scuzz rock, and a precursor to tinnitus. That may be more true of their prior two LPs but, as a breed, III is really a garage pop adventure of very high quality.  Sure, you can hear the muscle in the guitars from time to time, but the emphasis here is an boisterous, slightly ramshackle, pop tunes.  You can sample the album via the two tracks below --





Other favorites of mine on III include "Dead Horses" and "Catch Em Before They Vanish".

The album has a GBV DIY feel, but that isn't a negative for those of us on this blog.  Eat Skulls shows great breadth and imagination in entertaining us, but when restraint is needed, it is there.  Give it a try.

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