By August Edwards
An American rock n roll band.
sandlot jory have come out with their debut recording. This EP is crunchy, noisy, and tense. You can’t listen to one song on how bout that punxsutawney pourdown without listening to them all. Yeah, it’s like eating potato chips, except less like eating one chip at a time than it is trying to chew a mouthful, sharp edges cutting your gums and everything.
sandlot jory are based in the Central Valley of California. Drummer Stephen, who grew up in Modesto, describes his hometown as “kind of a small town that wants to be a big town.” Stephen and guitarist Jesse met on the internet, where they both shared their individual music and bonded over their mutual love of rock.
Originally, Stephen was going to play bass in the band, but that idea was cut short once he realized he “couldn’t keep up with Jesse’s riffs,” he says. Luckily, his drumming skills had been improving. As for finding that master bassist? “It gets fuzzy for me on exactly how me and Rodman met. I know I had gone to a couple of his gigs when he was doing PUNX. We reconnected after we ran into each other at a local venue called the G Spot,” Stephen says. “I saw he was playing in a band of his own. Me and Jesse needed a bassist so one day I hit Rodman up on Instagram and just asked if he’d be interested.”
Jesse, who shares that he was “born in South Korea and wielded underground rap sensibilities,” and later went on to “woodshed deathrock, doom, general punk, folk, R&B and Soul in Pennsylvania’s crumbling but sturdy Appalachian towns,” describes sandlot jory as “kumbaya + crabs in a barrel / testosteronejunky smash time.”
Listening to this fusion heightened my sense of anxiety—tightened my chest, made my brain feel fuzzy. This takes immediate effect. “jyont” throws you in without letting you acclimate, it sounds like it could have just started in the middle. Like, suddenly you’re riding through the eye of the storm. The drums are messy and wet yet not overpowering in the mix—they match the guitar and bass, gushing and spurting what-must-be blood. The vocals are strained and throaty, and sound like it could hurt bad. The clangy and metallic “think im based god” follows suit, packing in the sandlot-lory-brand humor.
“formale dehyde” spins for a luxuriating two minutes and twenty-nine seconds. It’s like the band’s way of letting you settle in, and I think there is something transcendental happening here. It’s so buzzy that it vibrates you, all your organs and goo. Though this track includes the same ghostly harmonies and barks, there’s something happening that reminds me of “Within You Without You” by the Beatles. I remember disliking that song when I was a kid because I didn’t know what the hell it meant, and it sort of scared me. Now, of course, I think it rocks, and even if I understand it better, I really enjoy mystery in music. “formale dehyde” gives me all of that, too—head-scratching towards spiritualism.
“formale dehyde” flows effortlessly into the next track, “everybody and their brothers a pop psychologist.” It feels kind of weighed down, like running through water. The EP closes with an unlikely cover: “nba street vol 2 cover.” Coming in at under a minute, the intro song to the video game NBA Street Vol. 2 is a saucy addition to the sandlot jory repertoire.
I wonder if it is fair to say that listening to this album is like scrolling social media. It probably sounds like a jab, though it isn’t. It could be befitting, as that’s how the trio connected, and its culture is steeped into their songs. There’s something entrancing about how bout that punxsutawney pourdown, not dissimilar to the trance you may enter when you tramp through an endless scroll on whatever social media has got you by your collar. But damn it feels a lot better to listen to this scrappy, stimulating album than it does to scroll.
Jesse calls sandlot jory an “American rock n roll band,” which is probably the most inarguable thing anyone has ever said. Right up there with the sky is blue. Truthful, but still uncanny.
Comments