Twelve years is a long time between releases. For the biggest artists in the world, the “stadium” bands, a return after over a decade away can feel like a massive event. For a DIY band however, it feels like starting over. It’s still a massive event for those in the specific microcosm, but the landscape has changed and even life as we knew it back then has changed, for the most part. Me You Us Them are up for the challenge of starting anew, set to follow 2010’s Post-Data with their sophomore album, Sound Confirms. Due out July 29nd, the band have been working on the record on and off over the past ten years, which included a break-up after the initial sessions. The trio couldn’t stay away though, and they persisted in creating the record, building on their shoegaze, post-hardcore, and 90’s “space rock” influences. The recordings culminate many different sessions over many different years, with bits and pieces of everything worked into the end results.
Sound Confirms rips a bit heavier than the band’s debut, with an aged sensibility to the songwriting, layering guitars and vocals to add nuance and depth to their space age pummel. We’ve waited long enough and thankfully “Humilitarian,” the album’s lead single, is as immediate as they come, crashing out the gate with a compound rhythm and a haze of wall-of-sound guitar chords. The band flex the same type of structural muscle as a Jawbox song, but the worn vocals and wormhole melodic sensibility draws closer to the band’s notable Failure and Shiner influences, surging between clarity and aggression from this stratosphere to the next.
-Dan Goldin, POST-TRASH.COM