Charmer
Downpour
So, here’s an emo band from the Midwest who share their name with a Tigers Jaw album, as if “emo band from the Midwest” wasn’t a dead enough giveaway for exactly how they sound. Yeah, like a lot of these, Charmer are scoring pretty low in the surprise department. That’s never been too much of a blight on their selfsame contemporaries, though, nor is it for Charmer themselves. They’re up to their third album now, which has to count for at least something. More to the point, within this ecosystem of familiarity, they’re putting some solid work into continuing its run of enjoyability.
That being said, Charmer’s uniformity also advises against expecting a level of scorch-your-eyebrows-off excellence. Downpour keeps in line very efficiently, where the rubrics of emo and rougher pop-punk are barely disturbed, let alone bent or broken. The closer that Charmer get is on Swords Dance as they lean into alt-folk with the scuffed vocals and weeping slides of guitar, but even then, it’s a bit of a comparatively weaker branch for them. They’re definitely comfortable in their core sound, dialling into production proudly carrying the natural, rustic feel of Midwest emo that stops anything getting in the way of a slightly grungy guitar tone and a pseudo-pop-punk cadence. And given the reflective writing style and especially the nature of David Daignault’s voice, their unwillingness to budge on a larger scale is well-telegraphed.
Accept that as observation rather than condemnation, though, because it is working for Charmer. Even when they do feel like bringing out the occasional new trick—the fiddly Midwest-emo guitar on Watercolor; the more enclosed grunge of the closer Galick Gun—the main body isn’t overshadowed. Not at all, in fact. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this album is Blue Jay and Daignault’s entirely sincere call of “Olly olly oxen free”, joined by the freed, burly richness of the emo swirling around him. That’s the M.O. of Charmer, and by and large, Downpour does a great job at facilitating it. When the pacing and overall vibes are kept extremely brisk, and the warm hues and sepia filters are applied in full force, at the very least, some appeal is guaranteed. On albums like this that sound the way their artwork looks, it always is.
Plus, there’s no way that Charmer don’t know exactly what the audience they’re courting wants. The market for emo like this never seems to go away, and it only makes sense for Charmer to keep abreast of it as best they can. You can’t fault them for it, just like you can’t fault Downpour, for the most part. It’s another fine addition to the pile, perhaps not rising to the very top but sitting well in the higher levels. A clear-as-day bias towards this sound might be doing a lot of the talking, but that doesn’t mean Charmer are without significant skill and panache. They’ve got more than enough of those to keep going for a long while.
For fans of: Modern Baseball, Tigers Jaw, Anxious
‘Downpour’ by Charmer is released on 23rd May on Counter Intuitive Records.
Youth Code
Yours, With Malice
Don’t panic—Youth Code signing to Sumerian hasn’t suddenly ground them away into colourless metalcore gruel. In fact, they’ve hardly changed at all. Even if they’ve hardly been on fire in the prolificness department in the 13 years, the sound has Youth Code has stayed firm—crushing industrial and EBM uninterested in swaying from its own dark, destructive tendencies. Even when that might not be the worst idea, they’re still keepin’ it up. And on Yours, With Malice…well, surely you can see where the discussion is heading, right?
It’s not like Youth Code are bad, as much as they don’t make their output easy to enjoy. It’s the trick of industrial music’s oppressive bleakness infused with what’s almost got a hardcore pulse, and over a full album, it’s frankly exhausting. At only five tracks, Yours, With Malice is a little more digestible, though in the way that nails covered in jam might be easier to swallow than on their own. The skull-fracturing pound hasn’t gone away; if anything, there’s a raggedness now that lodges it even deeper. And when that’s cranked up even further like on Make Sense—a cavalcade of audio horror that actually sounds like spluttering, sparking machinery hammered together in its transitions—it can be too much to bear.
There’s a feeling that that isn’t Youth Code’s goal, either. They aren’t trying to be Author & Punisher; there’s meant to be some semblance of listenability in here. If there weren’t, Wishing Well wouldn’t nab so many cues from Head Like A Hole and affix them in such a way as to preserve some of Nine Inch Nails’ original stalk. Rather, it’s a chronic niggle that’s always been difficult to look past. More often than not, they sit in the grey zone between uncanny, menacing and sorta-crossover-ish, glancing at all three but never committing to any. Sara Taylor’s vocals do a good job at shattering any such illusion, a forceful yell with little to no flexibility or forward movement. That’s far from the only bugbear, though; as a unit, Youth Code just don’t sit well.
For anyone who disagrees and has a far greater tolerance threshold for this sort of thing, it’s hard to see Yours, With Malice being the final straw. Sure, Youth Code’s new home means they aren’t among the most esteemed company in the world, but if you’re into this, that isn’t even a hurdle worth contemplating. Clearly, there’s no outside interference going on and Youth Code are being left to do what they do. Good for them, even if that means there’s the same impenetrability as always, and preaching to the choir is still the only tactic at their disposal. If it’s getting them the results they want, that’s fine.
For fans of: Author & Punisher, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy
‘Yours, With Malice’ by Youth Code is out now on Sumerian Records.
100%WET
100%WET
A bit of a weird one, this one. Imagine if 100gecs had taken some downtime from chronic Myspace addiction to flick through Uncut’s guide to shoegaze every now and then, and you might come up with something like this. You’d also be right to think that it sounds totally nonsensical. On paper, the two have nothing in common—hyperactive, irony-glugging hyperpop and the slow pulse of all-consuming reverberations aren’t particularly comfortable bedfellows. So why not go against the grain and attempt to fuse the two, and create an album that’s quite compelling, even if by total accident?
Even then, it still needs to be acknowledged that 100%WET haven’t happened upon some alchemical marvel that finds the two extremes cleanly crossing over. More often than not, their self-titled album’s compositional integrity relies on a tight beat skittering underneath some watery, washed-out indie-pop, and seeing if they can stick the landing from there. With songs like Re-Emerging and Leave It that are way heavier on the shoegaze sway, the cavalier nature of this approach isn’t well-hidden. So it’s something of a small miracle that those are in the minority. More often than not, there’s a weird pocket of success that 100%WET fall into, where the kaleidoscopic skitter of Looking In From The Outside and the pseudo-hip-hop foundations of Carat wholeheartedly work.
Granted, that’s coming down to aesthetics most of the time, but given that’s the Herculean prospect laid out by 100%WET’s own basic pitch, they probably deserve some leeway. To a degree, it’s not an issue that their suite of high-registered guest performers tend to run together, because they work with the overall mood. Similarly, the album being prone to losing some structural steam (particularly on the six-minute closer Warmblooded) is more a consequence of shoegaze as a whole than what this duo are doing with it. Often, it’s actually 100%WET’s contributions to the overall sound that make it stand out more. Even on the pillowy acoustic-pop ballad Two Packs Of Red Apples—probably the most straightforward song on the album—an incessant earworm can do a fair amount.
And overall, it’s just pretty cool to see an entirely unique, singular project like this feel as though it’s achieving something. 100%WET don’t read as memesters engineering obvious TikTok gimmick-bait; they’ve actually put thought into what this is and what it should be. Even if it doesn’t always work, the fact that’s on the table at all is pretty good going. And it most certainly won’t be everyone, though given what this whole project is about, that shouldn’t need to be explained in great detail. It’s a weird, off-kilter, shamelessly niche pop project, but one that’s well worth looking into, all the same.
For fans of: Air, Moby, piri & tommy
‘100%WET’ by 100%WET is out now on Crunchy Frog Recordings.
Words by Luke Nuttall
