DEEP STATE - Thought Garden

These Deep State had really hidden themselves well, somewhere among the shacks of the Athens suburbs, only surfacing on certain "blogs" now (but never managing to percolate through to the webzines, an ever more closed circle), months after the release of their latest record, "Thought Garden". Their second, though we might call it their first, if only because it's the first physical release, of a still-brief career.

We can call it "first" because this is a work in which the band finds a more defined aesthetic focus, an expressive cohesion that was missing from the more off-the-cuff and ragged "Nice": the adrenaline-fueled compression of the songs' tempos reveals Deep State's more decisive college-band identity, one that knows how to dole out a mix of impetuousness and nostalgia with understated intelligence.

The record indeed follows an imaginary coming-of-age arc, starting with the punk-rock of "No Idea Pt.II" and its pleasantly bittersweet melodic drifts, and closing with the faint, nostalgic guitar dissonances, Built To Spill-style, of "Urn", a sort of backward glance with a lovely grunge chorus. All told, the expressive nuances of "Thought Garden" speak not of yet another American slacker-band indulging in adolescent whims, but of a band holding an artistic legacy of considerable and lasting tradition by now, one that moved from punk through grunge and then evolved somewhere between Archers Of Loaf, Modest Mouse and the already mentioned Built To Spill (all summed up in "Nothing Speaking", with its great riff rumbling like an old pick-up truck).

Amid all this, our subjects lay down a series of tracks of real stature and fine melodic instinct, flirting with indie-pop on "Infinitesimals" and kicking off a proper foam-party on "Death Waltz", college-rock through and through, the kind that will surely ring out in frat houses across the pond. And that's without even mentioning the lead single, the tachycardic skate-punk romp of "Heavy Lunch", or the portrait of friendship that is "Idiot Waster", another generous nod to the beefier side of Beach Fossils.

In short, we're talking about a record with ten potential singles, a record that leaves you no room to breathe and proves "stubbornly dirty" in its own memory, both for the songs themselves and, more broadly, for the clarity of its nostalgic impressions of an age that, at least formally, no longer exists (or never existed where and how we wished it had). And yet, thanks to Deep State, all of this becomes possible again - and that's one of the secrets of great music.

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27/09/2017