Though it was released less than two years ago, Gauntlet Hair’s self-debut album already feels like a time capsule. It’s a snapshot of a moment when seemingly every emergent indie act was trying to elbow their way into Animal Collective's campfire circle by reverbing their voices into oblivion, duct-taping their guitar pedals down to achieve infinite delay, and locking their rhythms into an epileptic stutter. But as prevalent as that messthetic was, it’s one that has served as a springboard into myriad directions: Doldrums’ recent Lesser Evil pumped it up to super-club size; Braids’ upcoming Flourish // Perish chisels it into minimalist electro-prog. Gauntet Hair sees another, possibly more lucrative way forward. Their sophomore effort, Stills, feels less inspired by AnCo's Merriweather Post Pavilion than the actual Merriweather Post Pavilion: By amplifying the darker undercurrents of their sound and switching on the strobe lights, the Denver-via-Chicago duo sound eager to follow in the footsteps of those 80s goth acts that streamlined their sound and graduated to the summer-amphitheater circuit.
Gauntlet Hair’s sound was always big, it’s just that Andy Rauworth and Craig Nice’s vocals were the smallest things within it, as the duo were content to treat their melodies as ephemeral layers in the miasmic monsoon. Stills immediately issues a corrective: the instantly inviting opener “Human Nature” is a dream retro-dance-night mash-up of INXS’ “The Devil Inside” and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Head On”, building up a minimal bass pulse into a heart-racing, clap-clattered rush-- a gradual, ecstatic ascent that mirrors the stirring desire Rauworth openly expresses within. (When he repeats, ad infinitum, “They tell me I make you smile/ one time a week,” it’s with the cool confidence of a guy who presumes that, even with an 86% strike-out rate, he’s still got a crack at the courtship.)
If Gauntlet Hair’s debut sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of a well, “Human Nature” is the geyser that shoots Still above-ground into the great wide open. And, more often than not, Gauntlet Hair successfully answer the challenge of pushing themselves to both more populist and aggressive extremes: “Heave” and “Waste Your Art” are batcave-rockin’ fist-pumpers packed with massive, larynx-shredding choruses that imagine Kurt Cobain dressed up in PVC; “Falling Out” is a robo-rockabilly rave-up that feels like a 21st-century answer to Love & Rockets’ “Yin and Yang The Flowerpot Man.” The duo excel at moodier, downtempo material, too: the insidious “Bad Apple” is a smooth mid-80s MOR ballad by way of Wax Trax, and the dubbed-out “G.I.D.” boasts the album’s most sublime sonic flourish, when the song’s elating chorus hook is reprised as a mutant, slowed-down synth line that sounds like a symphony melting into the floor.
It's too bad the duo can’t sustain that sort of boldness over Stills’ entirety, even with a total runtime of just 31 minutes. This is ultimately a transitory record, its gate-crashing momentum tempered by songs that feel like holdovers from Gauntlet Hair’s more whimsical debut. With Stills’ crisper production cleaning up the band’s formative psych-pop splatter, the album’s more sanguine tracks, like the bass-slapping tropical-funk of “Simple” and Panda Bear-hugging “New To It”, come off as plodding and nondescript; what at first seems like an audacious, game-changing record for the band ends up feeling patchy and indecisive. Stills’ most bracing moments show that Rauworth and Nice have their eyes on the prize-- and the stadium back rows-- but their grand visions occassionally get obscured here by navel-gazing regressions. They’ve laid down the gauntlet; they just have to keep trimming the hair.
