Although I haven’t yet received my vinyl copy of this EP, I have heard that the packaging is a real pain in the ass, that you need a letter opener to open the fucking thing because it comes in an envelope like a greeting card. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, but for now I’m only concerned with these eight new songs, which, in true Torche fashion, tower over you like a crest of foamy sludge rock, threatening to break at any moment and swallow you whole. Despite the fact that the Florida band is now a three-piece, they don’t lose anything where volume is concerned; Songs for Singles is as deliciously frenetic, catchy, and heavy as anything they’ve ever done and even reaches new pinpoint horizons on some occasions (“Hideaway” and “Arrowhead”), as if they’ve brought laser daggers to a knife fight. Songs for Singles is only about 22 minutes long, and while the majority of that is a gush of iron-gutted crunch and fuzzy grooves, it closes with two expanded songs (“Face the Wall” and “Out Again”) that lay out and draw you into a void of dynamics and a hypnotic tempo of riffing, respectively, tickling every capillary in your body. Torche is in a league of its own, really, so packaging be damned. I’d gladly gnaw on a padlock to get at ‘em if it came down to it.
You should see it around here, man. It’s all exploding hearts and raging boners and hot sparks, which kind of sounds like a sweaty Saturday night at the steel mill, but really it’s just me on cloud nine in the rock n’ roll sky that opened up above me the second I dropped the needle on this glorious slab of coke bottle clear wax. A new C’mon record can, without much effort at all, make your entire life worth living, so the fact that it’s been three years since their last full-length, Bottled Lightning of an All Time High, means we’ve been comatose for quite awhile now. But here comes our heroic power trio, Sir Ian Blurton, Katie Lynn Campbell, and Dean Dallas Bentley, riding in on this pale horse to save the fucking day, to shock us back into coherence with their brilliantly boss fuzz n’ roll. Beyond the Pale Horse, then, is like a shot of adrenaline right into your balls, like most C’mon albums are, naturally, and like previous albums, its beauty lies in its beastly nature, its ability to shift and deviate while still remaining furiously savage. The play this time is that the electric noise is saturated in dreamy effects, and C’mon mixes some foggy, psychedelic magic in amongst their usual motor-driven madness. Dig the catchy title track and the majestically groovy – and unusually long – “Fortress of the Night” for the freakiest examples. But for sheer riffola, “Midnite is the Answer,” with its stoner crunch, is the one that pumps my blood. C’mon prove, once again, that they are almighty and untouchable.
*That’s not the record I own, but it looks just like it. Courtesy of whomever took the pic. It might’ve been Tony.
Ok, I don’t have an mp3 from the album to share (I just got it in the mail), so go buy the album from Yeah Right! to hear it for yourself. In the meantime, enjoy an older C’mon video of them washing their van and kicking it live!
Torche
C’mon