Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Cassette Review: QUARTERBACKS-Loveseat

First off, a big thanks to Liz over at Secret Decoder for bringing my attention to QUARTERBACKS. I would not have discovered them without her post which would have been a crying shame for a band this catchy.

QUARTERBACKS (who are caps obsessed for some reason), play their own style of self-described "twee-punk". Take the wonderful and now gone caUSE-coMOTION! (another, ironically, caps obsessed band), substitute the tremble set at ten for reverb and jangle, and you have a good sense of what QUARTERBACKS shot out over their debut cassette Loveseat. It's snappy, speedy, and sparse songs all about love and the confusion it brings in a very idealistic sense. QUARTERBACKS bring an intelligence to what could be a cliche topic and sound though, thanks to front man Dean Engle manipulation of the songs. Because all of QUARTERBACKS' songs never even manage to cross the two minute mark, they all inherently have an urgency to them. With Engle's ability to cram more than twice the normal amount of lyrics and ideas into each one, they manage to be more fleshed out than demos, while still having the catchy, twee simpleness to them as well. It's a hard balance that the band manages to strike very well.

In another time (and if they had thicker accents), QUARTERBACKS would have released one 7" and forgotten until they would up on a Messthetics compilation. Instead they are well on their way to making something that is What's Your Rupture? worthy. If you can bounce from an opener as catchy as "Point Nine" to the frustration of "Simple Song" to the sweetness of "Last Boy", then QUARTERBACKS are well on their way to crafting indie pop magic.



Links:

QUARTERBACKS' Tumblr

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