Hungover hooks, a lotta distortion, and Lone Star beer fuels one-man-band Thunder Buffalo. The debut self-titled album from Seattle’s Aaron Schroeder pivots on gnarly San Fran garage rock and ’60s psych nostalgia but assigns a tin-y Texas twang (Schroeder’s from Austin) to the formula that’d be home as a jukebox backdrop to a dangerous pub scene in a Robert Rodriguez flick (see: “Gloomy In Us All”). Two- and three-chords of thickly distorted Fender’s are backbone to the mayhem, and mixed with deafening volume; the kinda stuff that begs for a live performance.
Schroeder shields his voice in fuzz throughout most of the album and to varying degrees of success. When he musters shrieks long in the lung, like on “Hymn of the Devil,” there’s enough of a hook to leave the rest up the imagination; sometimes too much imagination, causing the music to fall into whatcha-hiding-behind territory. The best dose of medicine may be cutting back on lo-fi aesthetic for album two and let those hooks do the work themselves.
Lyrical topics include such spooky fun as ghosts, suicide, the devil, and partying. Thunder Buffalo has the nuts and bolts to put together a top-to-bottom album but falls short with too much reliance on technique and a few underdeveloped songs. Here’s to more beer and ghost stories though, and hectic schedule of touring to hone the band’s garage-drone craft, which needs live presence.
Stream the album below and buy it from Sarathan Records.
[bandcamp album=1544175477 size=venti bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB]
