Greylag

I have never been one to hide my love for the bands of my junior high and high school years. My music fandom was crafted out of giving any one band my undivided attention for an undetermined amount of time. I used to leave tapes/CDs in the stereo until they didn't fucking play anymore, whether physically or when I just didn't feel like living alongside it any longer.

By leaving life to whatever it was I was listening to, my day to day always took on the hue of my perceived understanding of whichever band was doing the hueing.

Some of my favorite life experiences took on the tastes of all of the hueing from some of my favorite bands when I think back on them now.

One specific band's one specific album that I can remember dedicating countless hours of my life to in my sophomore/junior year or high school was Blind Melon's Soup. I listened to that fucking album so much I would consider it one of my top five albums of all time, and that's without having listened to it all the way through in over ten years.

The smarmy, dark humor of that album sort of shaped how I felt about having to learn how to politik my way through life rather than being able to actually just fucking live it. I learned very early on that no matter what the Fuck you felt was the right thing to do, or intentionally wrong thing to do for the right reasons, nothing mattered as much as someone else telling you how you should have approached the situation. Everyone else seems more in control of my own life than myself, who is that same muthafucker living it.

Fuck off with your coaching moments alls you random people throughout my upbringing. I'LL FIGURE IT OUT ON MY OWN THANKS.

So then a few weeks ago my brohammer Patricky (he's albino, wears jeggings unironically and is left handed) sends me the promo release of the new self titled album from Greylag and I SHAT. Like, there were shat bro. shit shot out in past tense meaning I shat shit.

Ferserious, Greylag's sound remind me of sitting on my bed (GROUNDED AGAIN BRO) flipping through the cd booklet for the aforementioned Soup. It held my attention like the memories of losing my virginity, or the smell of my hands after driving 1,000 miles straight west and going through as many packs of cigarettes as there were pitstops for buying more cigarettes, or the taste in my mouth after burying yet another friend.

My first description of Greylag's sound was "It's like Blind Melon fucking Band of Horses", and while I think that's pretty damn accurate, I think I owe it to the band to toss a few more audible influences onto that sexual pile of sex. I mean, the Shannon Hoon throat influences are all over this shit. But the Ben Bridwell (the singer from Band of Horses bro, c'mon, stay with me) finish is unevenly glopped onto nearly every track as if it were applied by blowing backwards into an overused 18" plastic purple bong.

After almost two weeks of giving this album some serious fucking attention when I had fucking attention to fucking attent, I think I've got it.

Greylag sound like Blind Melon finger banging Band of Horses while Days of the New watches on casually stroking the furled neckline of a one Neil fucking Young.

There are glimpses of absolute perfection all over this album, but the opening track "Another" might take the broverbial cake as the tune that makes me feel like the kid in the movie Almost Famous who gets to watch his rockstar idols live right in front of him. There's this sheen of mileage on a band that I'm pretty sure is pretty fucking new, but this particular track makes it sound like these shitdicks have been shitting all over ears since before I was born, AND WHAT'S THE RUB? I'm pretty sure they're all fucking sixteen years old they sound so green.

So yes, they sound old and green bro. THEY ARE WALKING CONTRADICKS WITH INDELIBLE TALENTS AND A KNACK FOR MAKING ME STARE OUT WINDOWS WEARING ONLY A MISCHIEVOUS GRIN.

Greylag make me want to do things that don't really matter just to piss other people off. Ending a sentence with a comma. Leaving the toilet seat OFF. Unscrewing lightbulbs juuuuust so so they flicker annoyingly. Replacing all the batteries in someone's smoke detectors with nearly dead batteries, just to caues them to have one of those 2am episodes of "LET ME STARE OUT THE CORNER OF MY EYES TO PROVE I AM LISTENING INTENTLY FOR A CHIRP I CANNOT GUARANTEE IS ONLY IN MY HEAD".

Greylag have brought me back to the feels of high school, where everything was the end of the world, but you secretly knew you didn't have shit to actually worry about until you graduated. There's that guilty independence paired with a sense of adventure and self reflection that makes this fucking band so perfect right now. This album will own you after you own it, and it's an extremely welcome feeling of commitment when the album you can't get out of your head refuses to get out of your ear holes. Get obsessed bros.

Seriously, after you've forgotten everything else you've listened to this week, listen to "Walk the Night" with your head in your hands and TELL me you ain't got a lazy right wristed boner happenin bruh. That shit is goose pimply like when you overhear the theme song to House from out of nowhere, exactly when you needed to hear it.

GREYLAG, KIDNAP ME AND LET ME BE THE KID JOURNALIST WRITING ABOUT YOUR ROCK AND ROLL ADVENTURES ON THE ROAD IN A BUS NAMED DORIS!