Slowly but surely, but as if on a carefully calibrated cultural schedule, the aesthetics of guitar-driven 1990s indie rock have been coming back into style, gradually supplanting the 80s revivalism that dominated the past decade. This is great news if you grew up on this sort of thing, and even better if you've come to the point that you'd rather have your ears drilled than hear another new band that could be described as "angular." Grooms, a New York City-based trio previously known as the Muggabears, have been ahead of this curve for some time now, playing arty, Sonic Youth-derived rock music for several years to modest blog acclaim.
Grooms have never been tremendously charismatic or distinctive, but they are thoughtful, skilled musicians who excel at building intricate compositions that come over as loose and casual. While fellow New Yorkers and 90s rock torchbearers Cymbals Eat Guitars shoot for the moon with ambitious epics like "...And the Hazy Sea", Grooms go to a far more relaxed zone with their churning chords and tangled arpeggios. The music is dramatic and potentially crowd-pleasing, but the songs sound like the work of a band that has long since stopped caring about anyone's pleasure but its own.
Nevertheless, the wonderful thing about Rejoicer, the band's debut under the Grooms name, is that it's not actually insular and closed-off. There's an obvious thrill in the way the band members connects with one another, locking into grooves and following one another on tangents, and that transfers over to the listener. It all seems very composed and refined, but the best moments come out sounding like spontaneous epiphanies, and you can just imagine them nodding to each other approvingly across their rehearsal space as they snap into particularly exciting sequences.
At times, the musicianship gets ahead of the songwriting. The opening number "Dreamsucker" is a revelation -- dynamic, hooky, energetic! -- but the discipline on evidence in that song is lacking on less engaging tracks like "Ghost Cat" and "She-Bears", which both lean too heavily on drone and ambiance. Atmosphere is not exactly the band's strong suit. They come up with some nice noises and textures, but those sounds are far more effective when they bring character to melodic and rhythmic motifs, as on "Thumbs" and "CJ".
Rejoicer is a quality album with some especially strong tracks, but as much as it is refreshing to hear a relatively young band nail sounds from a previous era, the record is more enjoyable than it is interesting. Sure, you could sit around dissecting it, figuring out what bits are more Sonic Youth, or more Dinosaur Jr. or Helium or Polvo or Gastr Del Sol, and on and on, but you'd have a very hard time isolating what makes this music distinctly Grooms-ian. The band have made a significant leap on this album as musicians, hopefully they will soon find their voice as songwriters.
