‘Some people feel the rain, Other people just get wet, Some people feel the pain, Others haven’t yet, Choreography of absence, Over caffeinated hearts’ (Hope)

Nice Breeze have been honing their songwriting as a unit for the past decade.  Initial plans for their debut vinyl release on Siltbreeze stalled amid the chaos of the pandemic, but have thankfully now been resurrected.  Earlier would have been nice, of course, yet it’s hard to argue that the wait hasn’t very much been worth it.

The Washington DC trio explore the rarely visited edgelands where post-punk, power pop, and alt-folk intertwine, coalescing around a shared off-kilter melodicism.  And yet, never too far from the surface, there is also a distinct abrasiveness that primes a more experimental dynamic.  Fuzzed out guitars that flirt with a blown out scuzziness and flares of atonal electronics provoke intriguingly unexpected shifts in emphasis.  Meanwhile, the often semi-spoken vocals are immersed in a drawled nonchalance as they wryly contemplate our fast unravelling world.

As the agitated title track seeps into the laconic Now What, you sense that the journey will be anything but linear.  And it is one alive with a quietly understated catchiness from the bright jangle of The Power Pop Song to the delicately layered Hope, by way of the bristling Diplomatic Immunity.  And it shouldn’t really come as a surprise when the final track, PS Brix!, suddenly morphs into an expansive, drone fuelled climax.