psychic blast

The Death Set is one of those scrappy DIY Baltimore bands that seem to be popping up right and left now that the Brooklyn scene has been gentrified into oblivion.  Don’t be fooled - after meeting up in Australia, the two-piece of Beau Velasco and Johnny Sierra tried living in Brooklyn first, before moving south to their current home base.  And despite the new location, their most recent record “Wordwide” sounds an awful lot like a certain brand of Brooklyn art-punkers (think Japanther, or L.A.’s the Mae Shi), fusing lo-fi electronics and the noisy sensibilities of punk rock with oblique references to hip-hop and pop.

The band is best known for their intense live shows, where they play with a rotating cast of live drummers and scream into home-made microphones from the center of the floor.  The inevitable sweat stains don’t come across on the record, thankfully, but the infectious sense of melody and earnest energy do.  On songs like “Negative Thinking,” Sierra sings about fighting the urge to be cynical while pumping drum machines and chirpy organs propel the song forward, and sampled voices from self-help videos urge him on.

In some sense, the Death Set is a very traditional punk band, but without the macho attitude and with half the band members replaced by taped-together drum machines or jury-rigged synthesizers.  Among a growing class of similar artists from both coasts, the Death Set doesn’t necessarily stand out so much as serve as a central example of the relentless energy and engaged pop sensibility of contemporary indie rock.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS