When a press release mentions “Amphetamine Reptile Records”, “Touch and Go Records”, “Fugazi”, and “early ‘90s Dischord Records”, then you activate my radar and you have my full attention instantly. You pretty much already sold your release to me without having actually listened to it. However, creating such high expectations could very well end in utter disappointment. Luckily, Strangelight’s 9 Days EP is a thing of beauty and a total must for any fan of the above mentioned post-hardcore/noise labels.
Named after the 9 days the band spent in the studio to write and record 9 Days EP, the resulting 6 tracks are the collaboration between 5 musicians who all have ties to a huge string of other bands, such as Made Out of Babies, Thursday, Red Sparowes, Pigs, United Nations, Goes Cube, Mussels, Kiss it Goodbye. Apparently “The bands have little in common but the guys, Brendan Tobin, Cooper, Kenneth Appel, John Niccoli and Geoff Rickly share a love for all things angular, discordant, rhythmic and driving.”
And 9 Days EP is most certainly angular, discordant, rhythmic and driving. Fugazi wasn’t mentioned accidentally in the press release either, as from the opening riff in ‘Split And Divide’ till the closing seconds in ‘Tiers Of Joy’, the Fugazi sound is pretty much present above anything else. Having named the band after “the best song on Fugazi’s last record The Argument, this actually doesn’t come as a big surprise.
The thing is that when a band draws so much influence from the Fugazi sound and similar post-hardcore bands, you’ll need to do a pretty good job to actually make a name for yourself or to even being taken seriously. But Strangelight does this job more than perfectly. The 6 tracks on 9 Days EP are all 6 massive post-hardcore jewels, with nice clean and melodic vocals, dissonant guitar work, a fantastic rhythm section and quality song writing. There is a great variety between slower paced songs and more up-tempo played rhythms. As said the vocals are mainly clean, but at the right moments they will shout at you, adding a nice emotional layer to the mix as well.
The band said that they’re not here to reinvent the wheel; they just want to dive into the old classics and play some great music whilst having fun. To quote the band once again, 9 Days EP is “a simple honest record” and I couldn’t have said it any better. Get this EP in your life and play it loud.
