Neaux
Fell Off The Deep End
(Iron Pier)
Everything on Fell Off The Deep End is slow. Every song is beautifully slow, to be scrupulous with language. Think of all your adjectives, slumbering and autumnal.
Let’s go with what we know as facts. Neaux is a garage rock band from New Jersey. They’re listed as a two-piece, Kit on guitars and bass, and Sierra on vocals and these eight songs are the sum total of their creations.
So much of what Neaux is doing bears the hazy grime of luminescent neo-garage classics like Sonic Youth’s Dirty or more obscurely, bedroom indie rockers Black Tambourine, while also digging for nostalgic, shoe gaze bliss. The riffs are heavy and layers in with an awful lot of distortion. Through a dozen listens to the record already, and I’m still finding new crevices. Sierra’s voice on the opener “Slowstroll” is evasive and remote, lost in a sea of grunge guitars and production haze. While the whole feel is eyes to the venue ceiling uplifting, you’re reminded that it is so, very, slow.
There are only eight songs on Fell Off The Deep End which is tragically brief, especially as the band rolls out shots of life like “Somewhere Up North” where the listener gets brilliant lines about spending your last dollar on booze and drinking to forget. This is the kind of heartbroken, chanteuse song that everyone wants their ex-lover to write about them. Sierra is morose, giving dignity to a smart girl’s heartbreak. She’s also got a little rascal, dropping lines like “I’m tired/this game sucks” and “no one can fulfill me” on “Make Me Stay” a drowsy, mid-tempo grinder that is one of the album’s strongest.
Ultimately, I’m pining for more from Neaux. I want more of Sierra. I need more of their drowned out, sepia toned rock. As Fell Off The Deep End winds down into the sumptuous jam, “Sorry I Said It” which is blissful and blown out, those bare chords suddenly spell out the smoke trails of my most perfectly lonesome moments. Tell it.
Purchase Fell Off The Deep End here.
