Staff Reviews

Gauntlet Hair - Stills

Review by Tom Fenwick

Somewhere under all this reverb and murk, Gauntlet Hair may yet have the makings of a fine band, but the album burns out long before they have an opportunity to reveal wether this is true.»

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Gauntlet Hair are back with their sophomore album. Recorded during Portland, Oregon's grey winter days in producer Jacob Portrait's (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) appropriately named studio 'The Cave,' the album reveals Gauntlet Hair's guileless affection for the goth industrialists and post-punks who blazed a shadowy path through the 80s and 90s. Lead track 'Human Nature' starts with vaguely menacing whispers and a cicada-winged heartbeat that flowers into a grand, gorgeous squall. Mining that childhood nostalgia for inspiration has proved effective. The tracks on Stills have the signifiers of industrial and minimal-wave a la The Durutti Column or Joy Division, but all the fluidity and momentum of INXS or Depeche Mode's 80s synth-pop.
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