Surface To Air Missive - Surface II Air Missive

FOOLHARDILY SPRINTING TO THE TUNE OF RUE

Guitar lovers, welcome to your wet dream. On Surface II Air Missive, nothing else matters but the riff. Though hardly known outside of Bandcamp, these adroit 38 minutes feel, genuinely, like the culmination of decades worth of guitar experimentation in the accessible and radical. Noise Pop, Power Pop, Jangle Pop. Indie Rock, Math Rock, Prog Rock. Garage Punk, Art Punk, Pop Punk. All of these live within Surface, all of them breathe an inexhaustible fire. Vocals be damned, lost amidst a torrent of pluck. Simultaneously nimble and anthemic, jaunty and distressed, frantic and unruffled. Their magisterial presence a conduit for Taylor Ross and his broken heart, fractured and scattered, irascible like butterflies in the stomach. Though the lyrics, if heard at all, detract from Surface's technical preeminence (there's a deluge of "I's," "my's, and "you's"), Ross' wailing companionship validates the desperation found in the madhouse pacing. He also matches the Lo-Fi tonality admirably, veering awfully close to Will Toledo during his impulsive Car Seat Headrest days. We hear that best on tracks like 'I Don't Know Who I Am' and 'Landing Safety,' though admittedly Ross lacks the adolescent ambition Toledo craved.

All that being said, Surface contains a fair deal of fluff. This, an inevitability when a simple guitar - though exhausted of all its capabilities - is the primary draw. There isn't much beyond dumbfounded admiration for unmistakable expertise, though the variation in structure certainly helps matters. Certain songs, like 'Phases' and 'Saying Enough,' run headstrong like the balderdash that is Crying's Beyond The Fleeting Gales. Others undulate with the volatility of a teenager undergoing DABDA, like 'Big Night' and 'Some Blues.' They never latch; fluid and understated. At times, topsy-turvy, others glum. Yet it all moves with credence, as if acknowledging that time does, in fact, heal all wounds. The impatience arriving to that conclusion is half the draw of Surface.