Austin post punk trio Spray Paint are set to release their first album in three years in October called Into The Country. It’s first single is the dystopian ‘Cleaning Your Gun’, an eight minutes plus opus of minimalist space laden motorik rock that is arguably their finest track to date. It’s ironic given it forms part of a set of songs that have lain dormant since they were written in late 2016 on the back of touring their last record Feel The Clamps, which was their sixth album in four years. That sort of output came to a halt when Cory Plump (guitarist) and Chris Stephenson (drums) left George Dishner (guitars/electronics) and the Texas capital behind for Mexico and Australia respectively. Indeed, the layered nature of the track is reflective of the band’s semi-hiatus as Into The Country is very much a treated affair, recorded together with Ian Rundall then completed in stages by each member individually before being mixed by none other than Mikey Young.
Inexorable and determined yet pensive and angsty, ‘Cleaning Your Gun’, despite its disquiet also comes with a well founded fragility mirroring the paranoid insularity and anxieties associated with alt-right and their predilection to fear gun culture. A bass sound provided by controlled feedback provides a minimalistic drone like hum as layers of live and processed drums clatter and rattle away incessantly, tight as fuck despite never quite aligning . They set a foreboding stage that’s graced by a myriad application of unnerving electronics and dirty low end guitar chords that are shed like shards of sheet metal.
This unsettling yet fascinating mixture of sound could almost be seen as allegoric to a band forever teetering on the edge with tending to required responsibilities and the entailing tyranny of distance conspiring against Spray Paint continuing going concern. With Austin label Monofonus Press Records* who released two of their albums sadly calling it a day recently and the band no longer living in the same city who knows what the future holds. But for now, we’ve got this scuffed up gem to savour as we await Into The Country’s release via 12XU on October 25. ‘Cleaning The Gun’ is currently heading up what is possibly our best collection of tracks we’ve featured together at one time here in our New Post Punk/ Wave/ Shoegaze/ Post Rock Playlist on Spotify. That’s how good this track is. Listen below and pre-order the album here.
Tracklist
1. Alcohol Surface
2. Keep On Googlin’
3. Squeaker’s Theme
4. Fleshy Boy
5. Country Can
6. BRW’s Theme
7. Looking For Work
8. Bed Death
9. Bin’s Out
10. Can’t Help But Kill
11. Cleaning Your Gun
Cleaning Your Gun
Spray Paint (USA)
From the forthcoming album, ‘Into The Country’, 12XU. Out Oct. 25.
Audio Stream
*Spray Paint will play their first shows in three years when they assist Monofonus Press to go out in style at their R.I.P Monfonus Press Weekend on Nov 22-24 in Austin at Hotel Vegas and at the Monofonus Compound. Other bands include The Rebel, Beech Creeps, Tashi Dorji, Sun Araw, Obnox, Claire Rousay, Ralph White, Brandy and Matchess.