When a Freckle pops up, that’s when you know that the sun has gotten through. Don’t let ‘em tell you it’s skin damage – more like the sign of time well spent, as always, in the light. Freckle the band’s like that.

Freckle is, then, a Californian. Corey Madden, of Colour Green, and Ty Segall. From the riff, there was a shared understanding about what they wanted. It made sense to shoot for writing things that weren’t personal – instead, taking ideas and vignettes, turning ‘em into back stories and freaking out with the lyrics, making little movies.

Once they had a good batch of songs, it wasn’t long. They didn’t push too hard, they didn’t need to. As it came together, everything fell into place real natural-like.

Freckle is the hive mind of Corey Madden and Ty Segall. This LP reminds all of us that when the clouds are out you can still get sunburned.

TRACK LISTING

1. Paranoid
2. For The Last Time
3. Freckle
4. I Don't Know What I Need
5. Silk
6. Who's Sitting On The Moon
7. Taraval
8. Tea Brush/Millipede
9. Heavy
10. That's All We Wrote

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

Hitting flat and hard with their bass-drums-guitar and vocals alignment, Flat Worms use a buzzing combo of blunt force and surreal lyrics to hammer the absurdity of the status quo, as it deserves. Our social experiment continues to implode before our eyes; Witness Marks offers both critique and compassion, with songs that corkscrew through shades of exhilarating, dizzying and ambiguous spaces in between times of crisis and complacency.

Four years after they went all the way to Antarctica, Flat Worms are back in gen pop with the rest of us — but, as intoned on the album opener “Sigalert,” “back again like I never was.” Is this a nod to the way time passes over our sorely vexed synapses? Or are we to believe that there’s hope to be found in this broken world? Kick back with Witness Marks and see what other traces Flat Worms have left us in the dust.

The album title alone leaves a foreboding impression. But look closer — “witness marks” aren’t something out of a forensic analysis — they’re actually practical; scratches placed in old clocks designed to aid continued maintenance further in time.

Sure, there’s big questions and more on the board; primarily if we’re at all distinct from the absurdity coming down around us, or just another character in the mirror? Flat Worms are looking inward this time, outlining personal space in relation to themselves and others — sometimes even people they barely know. Among the slabs of slategrey outrage, the flowers of compassion are blooming, and the simmering power of their trio grows exponentially.

Working once again with Ty Segall, Flat Worms continue to find new answers by digging into themselves and playing their kind of rock: hard and flat, bass and drums thrusting stalwartly forward with conviction, guitar twisting and spinning in outrage, deadpan vocals decrying a dire set of circumstances.

The democracy of working together, so often messy and frustrating, was found to be a powerful release for Justin, Tim and Will. Acting as one, Flat Worms navigated challenging times by coming together, finding release in the clockwork repetitions of practice and the shared creative space they occupied together against the encroaching world.

In the short century of their existence, Flat Worms have agitated against the status quo with a disquieting lyric bent, to emphasize the psychosis of the times. These are positions taken within songs, sung out to individuals in the world. As evidenced by the lyrics,

“But I know I can always see you at the show Even though it’s only temporary and it’s time to go.”

. . .Witness Marks surveys an evolving sense of community. Flat Worms are dedicated to persevering and using the power of their collective. Come witness!

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: A scathing blast of punky power chords and snappy basslines, reminiscent of the atonal dirge of post-punk, but brightened with a syncopated groove and wry vocal leaning.

TRACK LISTING

Sigalert
SSRT
Time Warp In Exile
Suburban Swans
Orion’s Belt
Gotta Know
Sick Of My Face
16 Days
Wolves In Phase
See You At The Show
Witness Marks