Tag: Punchlove band

Review: Punchlove – Channels

Every now and then, you hear a new band described as arriving “fully formed” on the scene. It’s actually true in Punchlove‘s case, as they sound like they’ve been making shoegaze since at least 2010. You hear their debut album, Channels, and think, “This can’t be their first record.”

Yet, it is, and opening track “Breeze” hits you as heavy as any track Hum would’ve put out in their heyday with roaring guitars and crushing drums. The album was created not only post-pandemic, but also post-move from one continent to another. Jillian Olesen and Ethan Williams landed back in NYC after being forced out of Prague by the COVID-19 lockdowns. They met up with other NYU music technology students and Punchlove was born.

So were songs like “Screwdriver,” which sounds like The Cure meeting Failure in a battle of the bands. The ethereal fuzz of “Pigeon” is wondrous to behold. “Dead Lands” might be about Jillian Olesen’s feelings about returning to the U.S. to find it shut down and essentially empty thanks to the pandemic. It’s a lovely track.

“Apartment” is warped and weird. Every guitar and vocal in it sounds like it was partially melted in a studio fire that almost got out of control. “Birdsong” flies back and forth between bursting guitars and subtle chords. “Guilt” takes those bursting guitars and somehow pushed them further until it feels like you’re racing downhill with the band in a tour van without brakes.

I don’t know which is louder on “Elapse,” the driving guitar riffs or the drums hit and cymbal crashes that sound like Godzilla kicking over a power line tower. The album closes with “Corridor,” which could be thematically interpreted as a song beginnings or endings depending on where the corridor leads. It’s the softest song on the record and probably the most haunting as well.

This is all fine shoegaze stuff from Punchlove, who are already far ahead of other current bands in the genre. A lot of people are scrambling to catch up while Punchlove is making it look easy.

Keep your mind open.

[Punch your e-mail address into the subscription box while you’re here. I’d love that.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]

Punchlove wander into “Dead Lands” with their new single for their new label.

Credit: Ave Davis
Punchlove are announcing their signing to Kanine Records. To mark the announce, the NYC quintet is sharing a new single entitled “Dead Lands” that is premiering today via FLOOD Magazine. 
LISTEN TO PUNCHLOVE’S “DEAD LANDS”
Composed of multi-instrumentalists Jillian Olesen, Ethan Williams, Joey Machina, Ian Lange-McPherson, and visual artIst Viz Wel, the group quietly evolved from a bedroom project started by Olesen and Williams, into a full band whose live shows have begun attracting attention in their native New York. Their debut single on Kanine makes immediately clear why that is. Patiently constructed and subtly foreboding, the track uses three glassine guitars to create a shimmering wash of textures that swells and subsides under Olesen’s reflections on grief following a death in their family.  

Olesen says of the track: 
“You end up hurting yourself more when you don’t allow  yourself to give into the greater static of the inevitable decay all around you, as well as the grief and change. It’s all part of being human. For me, this song is about the frustration you face when you try to avoid it.”

Keep your mind open.

[Punch your e-mail address into the subscription box while you’re here.]

[Thanks to Tom at Terrorbird Media.]