It’s fitting that the album art for Kindling’s new Galaxies EP shows a color-tinted lunar landscape, because this four-track collection lifts off with a boom and a shockwave, like a shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral.
From the first moment of play, singer and band leader Stephen Pierce’s fuzzy electric guitar blasts the listener with a wall of sound, and Andy Skelly’s fast-rocketing drums get Galaxies off to a heart-racing start. When fellow singer/guitarist Gretchen Williams adds her eerie vocal track, her voice floats like a paper boat in a tempest.
It’s an admirable grunge-pop set, played with a DIY garage-punk ethos. But it’s not full-throated hardcore — the band nurtures that melody line, and thoughtfully adds layers from there. Pierce described it to me as “loud-but-quiet, crushing-but-soft, ugly-but-pretty” music. I see what he’s getting at. Often, the EP is thunderously loud, but the seas calm from time to time, and the album is all the more full and well-balanced for it.
This arc is especially effective on the third song, “Painkiller,” where a tireless sonic storm buoys vocals so serene that they border on lullaby. “Be the snow so lightly I can’t see,” sing Williams and Pierce through the reverb. “Be the night and take me while I sleep/ If the world comes crashing down, we can rebuild come day/ If the end has us in sight, we’ll embrace it like fate.”
This and the opening track, “Blinding Wave,” are the lynchpins on this album; the short songs “While Away” and “Coastal” play more like codas. At 13 minutes, Galaxies is hardly a fleshed-out vision of the band’s future (Kindling will release a second EP and a first full-length LP in 2016), but it’s certainly a skilled demonstration of Pierce & Co.’s big energy and tenacity.
A tight sound doesn’t come easy, and line-ups change. Since recording this EP, the band lost bass player Andrew Farr and gained new members Zachary Sawmiller on bass and Jeff Stevens on guitar.
But there are some deep roots here. Pierce and Williams’s dual vocals meld effortlessly, and drummer Skelly previously played with Pierce in the punk band Ampere for over a decade. And it clearly helped to have producer Justin Pizzoferrato — co-creator of the Sonelab studio in Easthampton — at the wheel during the two-day recording session for Galaxies.
Now that Kindling has grown from casual side project into a full band, it will be interesting to see whether its members warm to experiments in style, less traditional arrangements, and the occasional downshift in rhythm and tempo. With this capable bunch, it’s simply a matter of where their curiosities lie, and what kind of spark will ignite them next.
Kindling plays Flywheel on Main Street in Easthampton on Dec. 3, alongside three other acts: Parquet Courts, Pill, and Longings. The Galaxies EP is streaming on SoundCloud and is available for purchase as vinyl or digital download at noidearecords.com.•
