Flasher, S-T EP (Sister Polygon)
Members of Washington, DC’s Flasher.
Flasher are a three-piece project involving members of several current members of the new Washington, DC DiY scene (I’ll refrain from collapsing them all into the ‘punk’ category). Their debut, self-titled EP for Sister Polygon records is a thrilling journey through a panoply of late 70s and early 80s indie sounds.
Goth, death rock, new wave. Those willing to reduce these genres to Dippity-do’d hair, corpse paint and Tiger Beat pin-ups, whose bloated corpses are reanimated on throwback radio and by tribute bands, miss the point (we dig Rio as much as the next blog, but there was more to it than that). This was (largely) meant to be music for an uncertain future and, at its best, the attendant razorwire nervousness underpinning much of the musical output reflected the feelings of anyone actually paying attention to what was going on in the world at the time. Small wonder, then, in the current climate, that so many newer bands are turning to this brooding, greyscale music as a framing device.
Flasher nails that feeling of unease right from the off on opener, “Tense”, with its tightly coiled, nervily picked guitar lines and short stabs of siren-like synths, and doesn’t let go. In fact, it’s quite difficult to tease out one particular track here, as the whole EP plays more like a series of movements than individual songs. For a band who, according to a write-up in WAMU’s bandwidth.fm, are still settling on a sound, it’s remarkable the way their energies fuse, the feel and texture of the tracks seem fully realized. Highly rec’d.
Flasher’s self-titled EP is out now, digitally and on cassette, through the band’s Bandcamp page. Sister Polygon Records will release it on vinyl November 18 – preorder your copy here. The band is also on tour (dates below):
Oct. 24 – Quebec City, QC @ Le Cercle w/ White Lung
Oct. 25 – Ottawa, ON @ House of TARG w/ White Lung
Oct. 26 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace w/ White Lung
Oct. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle w/ White Lung
Dec. 7 – Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA w/ Swim Team
Dec. 8 – Allston, MA @ OBrien’s Pub w/ Swim Team
Dec. 9 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat w/ Swim Team
Dec. 10 – Queens, NY @ Knockdown Center w/ Parquet Courts
Highlights include: “Tense”, “Throw It Away”, “Destroy”
