Pewter Cub: If You Can Hold Your Breath

Music journalists used to like tagging this stuff as “shoegaze” or “dream-pop," maybe.

Whatever could, hopefully, connote to you, dear reader, a sense of: sweet but dark, chilly but alluring, dark and moody but tight and twirling.

This local trio’s tunes strike beguiling balance: rhythmically-rousing up against an atmospheric swoon of teased distortion, melodious vocals over storming-guitars. Most of the pop-ish hooks or noise-rock-leaning acerbic-accents are softened, lulled or frayed into a predominantly fuzzier texture blanketing  each song...

These songs don’t have a place, per se, or a set seasonal sensibility: altogether chilly and nocturnal at once but at other points warmer and syrupy in tone. Like a dream, songs are dashed and dotted with what would otherwise be potentially perpendicular elements (guitar shreds over breezy-melodies or caustic psychedelia under dulcet soulful ballads) and like any dream, it all seems, somehow, to make sense at the time

But yeah, that low gurgling bass and buzzsaw guitar will recall some of the good ol' late 80's/early 90's indie rock icons... But dig deep enough through Breath and you'll start tracing Pewter Cub's own distinctive signature swish upon that certain noisy/pretty, rough/rhythmic -style.

Some are ballady slow-dances, some of are angsty surf-rock tumblers.  Certain guitar timbres crackle an almost wintry vibe, yet there’s these nostalgic fuzzings of something autumnal. The warm syrupy bass tones radiate a summery sense but then there’s the get-up-and-go/cicada-buzz-spurring guitar-noise-freak-outs of a spring’s bright blooming. "Shoegaze" or whatever you want to call it, always invited a sense of heavy layers, a pop-song caustically coated, distorted. Pewter Cub drape this dazzling sheen over their own plate of pop...a divider almost, keeping it from ever being too ballady or too lullaby-ish.

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