Font’s Strange Burden is a welcome addition to the post-punk pile-on

Their most reputable course of action is to die out in a fashionable window before they just become the start to some ongoing process, one that will inevitably be gored by the eroding sands of time until its soul winds up as material in the Shein factories. The garage-rock revival brought us the White Stripes, the Strokes, and Spoon on its onset, yet tripped and stuttered its way into an abominable hill of Jet’s and faux-leather. My point is that the first time you hear a nervous early-twenty-something wring the nervousness out of his voice over a dance-adjacent post-punk beat, a timer starts. The post-punk revival may be hitting its American Eagle era.

This is no fault of Font’s, a respectable addition to an oeuvre simply too vast to allow for natural surprises anymore. I hear the fervor in their playing as “Hey Kekule” sputters its groove with assuredness, a knowing smile to the audience that they’ll be blown from their speakers somehow imitating Arcade Fire & Model/Actriz in the same breath (a genuine feat in itself), but it’s effort wasted on double-work. They have faith in their singularity and have moved mountains to rewrite post-punk tropes they could’ve just lifted in the first place. You hear one Dogsbody and the rest is noise. “It” is Model/Actriz’s “Slate” with a finger under its nose as a disguise.

I cannot in good faith resign the record to just being a hall of mirrors for the last 5 years of British invention, as the record’s best moments are oddly enough a callback to something even stranger. “Looking at Engines” begins its normal affair with tense rhythms and angular guitar leads, but in a moment of genuine creation, staples on an early 2010s radio-rock hook, major-key shift and all. It is uniquely baffling and disparate, but it sold me on their merits more than any other second of the record; they’ve found the plot. If you’re just a collection of imitations, make them a fucking collage. Make the mosh pit listen to Bastille.

On moments where they balance this tumblr-nostalgia with their punk tendencies, they are Font; this is unfortunate due to the above moment being the only shining beacon, but a moment of genius is more valuable than a discography bereft of bravery. It should be disclaimed in red letters that Strange Burden, while infuriatingly short, is paced and produced acutely. The rhythms sputter and sway, the guitars chime, its synths bellow, even if their presets would fail a plagiarism algorithm. Thom Waddill threads the needle of tension and melody in his vocals more often than he leans too overtly in one direction, threatening to nervously breakdown or soundtrack a Hollister commercial.

They list that they have multiple drumlines and samplers on top of the usual rock gamut; there was not a single ratified moment where either of those editions were noticed or resulted in a differing sound palette. It’s a shame, I want to hear Font on all cylinders, displaying the oft-preyed upon resource of an idea. You’re putting in the work, make it sound like work was done. A drumset is too much racket for two drumsets to overlap at all times; flip these tracks inside out and double down. Don’t relegate a sampler to a noise the audience already expects. We ask nothing of those we despise and everything of those we wish to see more. A second disclaimer should be added: there are worse misgivings, and no greater compliment, than wanting you more.