Often when I’m trying to figure out what I want to listen to, I find myself trying to make the decision between heavy riffs or catchy melodies. Do I want to sing along with the choruses, or do I want to be crushed beneath the monstrous weight of the guitars?
Luckily, The Life and Times never makes me choose, hitting like a mix of HUM-y walls of noise with almost Beatles-y melodies.
And I am here for it.
I first heard The Life and Times at the wonderful Post. Fest in Indianapolis last October, where I also discovered bands like Driving Slow Motion, The End of the Ocean, SOM, and saw favorites like Spotlights and Holy Fawn. It was a heavy, almost disorientingly dense line up, and so even though I remember enjoying The Life and Times’ set (and Allen Epley’s vocal feature in Spotlights’ set where they performed the collab track they released the year before), when a friend asked a couple months later if I had heard of them, I had completely forgotten about them, buried under the weight of the rest of the festival.
But as soon as I listened to Skull Map*, it all rushed back to me. The punishing crunch of the space rock guitars, the thunderous drums, Epley’s growl-less soaring voice, and my God, the hooks. It felt like it was tattooed on my soul from birth as the very foundation of my tastes.
“Killing Queens” opens the disc with a huge riff aided by a molten slide lead, shifting between quiet verses and giant choruses, Epley crooning, “now the only one I care about is you / now the only thing I drink about is you.” It’s a near perfect track, setting the bar incredibly high for the rest of the record.
And the record is up for the task. “Dear Linda” pairs a pleading vocal line with a wash of frantic, reverberated guitars that are completely drum-less for the first minute and a half. Once they come in though, it’s off to the races. “Group Think” is boisterous and joyful. About twenty years earlier, it could have been a staple of college alt-rock stations, filling out the playlists of DJs looking for something like Smashing Pumpkins but more obscure.
“Group Think” fades into “I’m The Wedding Cake,” which might be the shining star on the record. It plods along with a slow, doomy tempo, its hushed minor key verses bursting into a riff that explains why dream sludgers Spotlights might have tapped on him for a guest feature.
On the b-side, “Falling Awake” shifts the sonic palette a little with an acoustic guitar arpeggiating a strange chord progression, staying the full-on wall of sound explosion for a fuzzed out guitar solo (anyone questioning my comparison to the Beatles early should have their curiosity sated here). It’s followed by “Dark Mavis,” a jubilant, angular instrumental that proves the Life and Times don’t need choruses to be catchy. It’s followed by “T=D/S,” which rides a rollicking boots-n-cats beat through airy verses to a climactic end.
Closer “We Know” is a seven minute slow burner. It’s first five minutes are a somber, quiet rumination on failure, but in its closing moments, it blows the doors open with an enormous pair of guitar riffs and warlike tom-heavy drums that sound more like Neurosis than Pavement.
After dozens of repeated listens, both before and after receiving the vinyl copy, Skull Map is one of the most satisfying records I’ve heard in years. Each repeated listen is more enjoyable than the last. Now if only there was some way to make sure I heard it before Post. Fest last year so I could have fully appreciated these songs live…
*The title of this album is a little ambiguous. On Spotify and other digital outlets, it’s listed as self-titled, but the download code included in the record and a number of physical retailers refer to it as Skull Map.