Much of the press accompanying the self-titled debut of Brooklyn duo Hunters describes their live show with some variation of “wild” or “unpredictable.” Which is great for context, but if you don’t live in New York, and only have access to the actual album, it starts to feel like a preemptive apology. During the many times I found my attention wavering during the duration of Hunters, I tried to imagine what those shows might look like, without consulting YouTube or Google Image Search to spoil the surprise. I picture Derek Watson with a dark, matted haircut, dressed entirely in denim and leather with some flannel, snarled upper lip but also a bit playful and laconic. On the other side, there’s Izzy Almeida, playing in the back until her vocals come in, and when they do, she really puts herself into it. Maybe a combination of Alice Glass and Alexis Krauss, a similarly hell-bent-for-leather cockiness, lots of facial expressions, visible tattoos and maybe a shock of dyed hair. As it turns out, that’s not far off, but I’m not gonna give myself a lot of credit—that’s a standard archetype when you hear grungy fuzz guitars and sneering vocals within a coed pop construct. It exists for a reason. So, on some count, Hunters is successful in providing a visual of what the band looks like for the people who have yet to see them in action. Problem is that even after a dozen or so listens, I have no idea what Hunters actually are like.
Hunters signifies a generic scare-quote “attitude” on a micro level—the distortion here is of the Big Muff or Rat pedal variety, none of that tasteful tube amp stuff. Both Watson and Almeida take on an adult-adolescent vocal style, which neutralizes whatever friction you’d get from their give and go interplay—I suppose both sexes sound kinda the same when projecting from the nasal passage. But in the big picture, Hunters is perfectly palatable in any way that matters. The duo position themselves as a missing link between 90s grunge and the beer-swilling, noisy art-pop of NYC in the early 00s, two styles that have little in common other than an emphasis on dynamics which Hunters sorely lacks: in practice, it's as mesmeric and even-keeled as a Kraut-rock record.
For the most part, a Hunters song consists of a riff that plods and chugs for a couple bars while Watson sings a clipped, major-key melody and after he’s done, it lunges slightly one way or the other. After a couple of measures of that, the vocals trade off nearly similar cadences at nearly similar intervals. If there’s a clean guitar being played, a distorted one is no more than 30 seconds away and it’ll likely churn out some variation of “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”. And yet, both the “loud” and “quiet” parts sound like they’re being played at the same volume. I imagine Hunters would be the first to tell us that this isn’t meant to be intellectualized—the lyrics really don’t offer themselves up for much analysis, and they’re also sung in a way that lets you know your attention is best directed elsewhere. But trying to elucidate real differences between these songs, most of which are titled like shabby chic colognes (“Narcissist”, “Street Trash”, “Seizure”, “Blackheart”), requires a laser-guided focus and a litigator’s knack for parsing minutiae through nuanced language.
On a macro scale, Hunters seem awfully algorithmic as well, a band that could conceivably open for every one of their fellow acts on the Mom + Pop roster without stealing their thunder. On “Street Trash” and “It’s True”, the sound of cheerleading vocals over distorted guitars instantly recall Sleigh Bells, but as a band that’s less beholden to noise or pure pop, Hunters do little to keep you from listening to Sleigh Bells instead. Like Wavves, they build hooks upon a handful of heaving power chords as a reflex, but Hunters manifest little of Nathan Williams’ ambitions for variegated production; after a first half of five almost indistinguishable songs, you see “Nosebleed” topping over six minutes and wonder how the hell it’s going to get there. They throw in a tempo switch about halfway through and “Nosebleed” is really just two Hunters songs stitched together. And yeah, like FIDLAR you figure they drink cheap beer, but they lack anything remotely resembling that band’s frightening commitment to their own debasement. Which is fine, plenty of us have gone to work at 8AM totally relieved we decided against shotgunning that last beer or downing that Jager bomb. The problem is that Hunters doesn’t really deliver in the moment either, as it’s not much different than reading about those wild, unpredictable shows of theirs as opposed to being there—all you think about is the fun you’re not having.
