Off Contact

Reviews

Off Contact Can You? LP

Before today, I only knew of NO DIRECTION from Rapid City, South Dakota, so it is exciting to hear new bands from that state! OK, OK, OK, OK. I didn’t know what to expect and I know a lot of folks would say that this harkens back to the angular and danceable post-punk hits of the late ’70s and early ’80s. However, to me, this feels like NYC in the mid-to-late ’90s with RADIO 4, the FLESH, the RAPTURE, LIARS a bit, COMPUTER COUGAR, INTERPOL, etc.—the elements are there from the pioneers of the post-punk stuff, but it is different and fresh, can you dig it? There are ten songs here; some are huge sonic landscapes and others are shorter day trips to the fuzzed-out countryside. Can You? is a loud late-night drive record, or at least a loud headphones listen when you just want to block out the world. In fact, I’m going to listen to it again right now so I can neglect some important-ish things that I should be doing.

Off Contact Pearls Before Swine LP

This full-length is the perfect balance of post-punk and post-hardcore. Angular guitar work that sounds like it could easily be from a WIRE recording, combined with the song structures of FUGAZI. Elements of shoegaze and jazz filter through occasionally, allowing for shifts in tempo and weight. “Demonize” drifts from angst-driven post-hardcore to gloomy post-punk and back again in short order. It’s these interesting and imperceptibly smooth shifts that make this album worth listening to—a song evolves in the time of a single snare hit.