Gauntlet Hair - Gauntlet Hair

More weird American electronic indie pop with a reverbed tropical sound? Oh go on, you can't have had enough of these kooky kids yet surely? From the sloppy but gregarious sounding opener which carries hefty DNA samples siphoned from Animal Collective and MGMT we're in a delirious peyote pop party that sounds very now. I'm not unimpressed by their musicianship - they sound like a competent bunch - but I can't get inside of any of the tunes, they kind of flow hazily into one another sounding familiar, tuneful but muddled, listless and a little short of firm orientation. Maybe, as often happens, I've been exposed to a great deal of music like this from over the Atlantic during the past few years and this is the distillation of all that...maybe I've reached a kind of impasse? They struggle with a real identity do Gauntlet Hair and some of their ideas come across as sloppy or half-baked and the "singing" really gets on my tits after ten minutes. This is something Geologist, Tare and Bear could easily get away with 5-10 years ago because they were constantly conquering new sonic turf but these guys sound generic to me, sorry. There are some fun swampy sounds and curious choppy tunes to be enjoyed at junctures so this ain't an outright diss by any means, first albums aren't always great. If they feel the need to carve their own notch on the bedpost that is the music industry they could do with locking themselves away from the current underground for a few months and abusing their electronics in more deviant ways...