Despite the veritable onslaught of artful arrangement-heavy music with its nice clean melodies, pristine harmonies, and all around evocative qualities, I'm also a fan of rock grit. It's what draws me to the live shows of ARMS, Conveyor, and Sondre Lerche or why I was so head over heels for Writer when I first saw them. Because despite how clean-cut they might sound on their studio recordings, their live sets are filled with wild, free-flying guitar pyrotechnics and raw, uncontrived roars. That appreciation of the noisy, the imperfect, is exactly what drew me to Brooklyn garage rock trio Dull Edges.
Starting last year as a two piece with guitarist/vocalist Patrick Lane and bassist R Smith before drafting Ben Kaplan on drums, the rather newly minted trio already has a strong release under its belt in Half Shattered. The 5 song EP is a set of purring rip-roaring guitar rock at its finest. While tracks like "Washed Out" and "Screens" are cacophonous, while "Big T", "Space Jam", "Holed" are righteously slow-burning psychedelic jams in the vein of Secret Mountains sans powerhouse vocals or Youth without the sunny beach vibes.
Half Shattered, in all of its tragic shortness, reveals a rather versatile band well-versed in its influences and strong in its delivery. There's no hiccups as the EP transitions from its rocky clatter to its more down tempo airy plod, rather it's smooth and still manages to maintain the forward momentum of the more fast-paced predecessors. Dull Edges can be noisy when they want to be and when they are it's deliberate, not the fault of a band that's terribly out of leagues or remarkably out of practice. But the Brooklyn rockers also clean up quite nicely as evidenced in the second more drone-inspired half of Half Shattered.
Dull Edges is releasing "Screens" and "Big T" on a 7" next month so stay tuned for that. Until then, you can listen to Half Shattered on Bandcamp:
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