The sound of undulating slacker rock in The Slaps' new Americana song “Flip”

13 November 2024, 16:16 | Written by Camryn Teder

(Tracks)

(The Slaps)

This burgeoning post-rock group just released its new album Mudglimmer. Recorded at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, home to the Sun Ra collection, amongst other jazz greats, the album is a combination of free jazz sound with distinct edges of old country and slacker rock.

Some groups have such a quirky, distinct sound that it’s hard to know exactly where to place them. When I pull myself back from complete sound immersion, the question left ringing in my head is, what kind of music is this exactly? While plenty of alternative rock bands like this exist, some guys bring a unique hint of Americana, free jazz, and grunge to the mix that sets them apart from the pure alt-rock sounds of groups like Wet Leg or Alvvays. You just never know quite what to expect. This is where successful underground grunge groups like Wednesday and MJ Lenderman lie for me. The contemporary DIY group The Slaps is on its way there too.

That’s how I felt, anyway, listening to the entirety of The Slaps’s new record Mudglimmer. A fusion of different genres, they admit that it was not an easy album to make. “This de-evolution is kicking our asses. It’s fucking fantastic,” they said. With a band known to spend entire shows improvising, it comes as no shock that they love all those delicious moving parts.

Featuring guitarist Rand Kelly, bassist Ramsey Bell, and drummer Josh Resing, the band formed at DePaul University, taking inspiration from a class called Improv Scratch Orchestra, taught by composer Jeffrey Kowalkowski, to form their sound. They made their debut later in 2017 with a slew of surf-rock singles. Now they’re onto their third album with a much more eclectic sound.

The new project features sounds like electric guitar, tambourine, and drums coiling together in avant-garde rhythms in the track “Flip”. With its intimate, raw production, and tongue-check lyrics, the song is a refreshing mix of slacker-rock, understated math-rock, and the eclectic sensibility of musical pioneers such as Arthur Russel.

While the topics of this LP vary, one theme is its ferocious outlook on the natural world, inspired by guitarist Rand’s homesteading sidequest where he learned how to slaughter ducks and turkeys. The band has that truly visceral feeling running throughout the whole album. Give it a listen below.