Well... what’re you looking at?
Listen, pal. I know the riffs are choice and the rhythm section is keeping the angst in the forefront, but that doesn’t mean that you get to talk about Pearl Jam while they’re playing, frick Pearl Jam. Eddie Veder can go kick rocks.
halfsour is a power-pop three piece hailing from Boston and Sticky is their second full length following 2016’s Tuesday Night Live, released through Jigsaw records in 2016. Their newest, released through Fire Talk and Disposable America, is a powerful, concise zing dinger that brings the crunch with a steady stream of honesty, intimacy, and frustration. This is pop, this is punk, this is definitely not pop-punk. Boy howdy no siree. Those lame-o’s wanna get out of this town; halfsour wanna burn it down and analyze every burning ember to make sure we do better next time.
The single “Blurred Camera Phone” helped to set the tone for what the lyrical environment of this album was going to entail. It’s a reflection of an everyday event pushed to profoundness by the instruments behind it and the strength in Zoe Wylner’s voice. I guess I should really think twice more about the shit I do everyday. With Sticky, the best parts are found in the small details and a constant reminder of how I need to slow down and think about the reason why I couldn’t stop staring at the one oil stain on the road for 4 hours when I was working as a flagger for PennDOT during the summer after my freshman year of college.
The reason I bring up that job specifically is because something about this album brings the memories of standing around and flipping a “STOP/GO” sign for hours up to the forefront of my mind. This album is strong in painting cohesive pastiches that meld together in the form of a landscape much akin to the cover art. Everyone talks about how at a certain point when you’re driving, the landscape blurs together to form one image, but what happens when you stand around for hours on end staring at the same patch of road, same group of people, and same trees? You’re mind begins to create a cohesive image of how this landscape is affecting you, and once you’ve created that image, what’s next? For halfsour, the only obvious conclusion is to write about the things that have occurred within this image in order to make sense of the mundane.
There’s a moment in Paris, Texas when Harry Dean Stanton’s character, Travis, is picking up his son from school and they begin walking home. What could be scene as a simple, everyday task in any parent’s life becomes elevated because the focus is beyond the environment of the school and city which have become the blurred, still background. Take a moment to look down at an oil spill, or consider why those two people were walking the whole way home separated across the street? Everything’s important, even if it’s just gum on the sole of your shoe.
RIYL: Scraping your knees in the summer,
drinking on a stoop yelling about it all, the best flannel….you know the one I
always wear, The Breeders, Guadalcanal Diary, Speedy Ortiz
Favorite Tracks: Blurred Camera Phone, Built-In
Guilt, All Gone, Big Teeth, Milk Bath
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