SOTD #107 // Gauntlet Hair: 'I Was Thinking…'

Social media has given rise to an awful lot of things, both good and bad. The influx of inane news about Farmville on one’s Facebook feed is easily outweighed by the joy of seeing the first photo’s of a distant relative’s newborn pop up. Equally, the amount of cringing and acute agony endured when looking at an old MySpace profile is nothing like the rush of finding a great new act on the rapidly deteriorating website. Of the rapidly declining amount of reasons to visit the site, Gauntlet Hair have got to be high on the list.

The work of two men called Andy and Craig living in Colorado, their sound is one that desperately refuses to be pigeonholed, which gives rise to another of social networking’s great injustices – last.fm’s tagging service. While erstwhile listeners have described the duo as ‘indie’, ‘experimental’, ‘shoegaze’ and ‘lo-fi’, they haven’t come close to grazing the kind of racket Gauntlet Hair produce. It is desperate, rhythmically pounding, a sprawling melody mixed with yelps and a dark ambience. The songs come close to being all encompassing, a veritable assault on the senses, vivid and hazy simultaneously, reliant on reverb and, if there is any justice, destined to fill clubnight dancefloors the world over. It doesn’t really lend itself to the two word tagging sprees so beloved of last.fm users, but that’s a large part of why the few tracks available have been so completely beguiling.

Gauntlet Hair are currently working on their debut album according to their MySpace, a message salvaged from the sinking ship. Somehow, copies of the duo’s 7” on Forest Family Records hasn’t sold out, which features both the brilliant ‘Our Scenery’ and ‘I Was Thinking…’, the latter of which you can download below in all it’s shimmering, breathtaking glory.

Gauntlet Hair: ‘I Was Thinking…’