Dead Low Tide

(Tiger Style)
by Craig Regala

This strikes me as a procedural face-peel of ’80s rock-as-new-music-as-roots movement. The frontman desperately shakes you by the elbow, trying to tell you to wake up, to wake up to… anything, and the band refuses to be slotted as “mere” support. Birthed from three members of The Murder City Devils mated with a guy that plays eight-string bass and has tooled for GodheadSilo and Enemymine, it kinda sounds like TMCD trading in their gritty psych/indie base for something soaked in their actual youth. Because of the med-tempos and ebb’n’flow around the singer, I keep thinking of what I know, rather than what I don’t. The “what I know” part reminds me of the tremendously worthy units My Dad Is Dead, Barkmarket, and Shiner. Pensive, dramatic chords chime, ring, and cascade over the sound of regret as the bottom throbs on. That the guy who twisted knobs on this also did so for Built To Spill may make my job easier, but these guys can waltz between that combo, Caustic Resin, and Chokebore. Chokebore’s fine 1996 disc, A Taste for Bitters, has been the soundtrack for many dark episodes in my internal life, bleeding off the poison so I can bear to be myself again. So R.I.P., for Dead Low Tide are no more. Be your tombstone so well carved.
(401 Broadway 26th Fl. New York, NY 10013)