Chicago’s Axis: Sova hit the beaches of Southern California with Ty Segall to make a total hi-fi classic. Often feral and consistently catchy, ‘Blinded By Oblivion’ is lit up with interlocking drum kit and drum machine, adventuresome guitar, bass, and harmonic vocals on every song. Icy lyrical perspectives, rendered in a sunshiny natural paradise, transmit the fun and fraud of human polarities with urgency and an occasional eye roll.

In the bright opening moments of ‘People’, ‘Blinded By Oblivion’’s first cut, an induction of dreamy guitar textures from all corners set up the immortal opening couplet, “People will be the end of people / People will snuff the light.” Dark humour never sounded so bright. From there, the accelerated, percussive thrust that begins ‘Hardcore Maps’ launches a sequence of quick-hitting singles, each demonstrating a melodic attunement previously only touched upon in the Axis-verse.

Making for an undeniably good/bad time, streamlined and more reflexibly physical than previously known, ‘Blinded By Oblivion’ begs the universe to bring back rock and roll radio. All the elements are there: compassion for our collective fallibility, rebuke on the tip of the tongue, all rolled tight with hook-laden, high-energy construction.

TRACK LISTING

People
Hardcore Maps
I’m A Ghost
Trend Sets
Plastic Pageant Show
Metallic Hearts
Join A Cult
Persuasion
Writing Blind
That Dream Again