Photo: Nedda Afsari
California Indie-Punkunit SPICE expands their palette of damaged anthems and addiction poetics with a more bristling, visceral sound in their latest album release, Viv. With a sound honed from years in the trenches of various bands, break-ups, and breakdowns, Viv opens with a bang, capturing SPICE at their stormy, weathered best, with booming drums and East Bay riffs skidding out in a rockslide of rapture, regret, and bruised melody.
The album’s first single, “Any Day Now”, embraces the group’s shredded pop potential. Their intuitive use of emotion is the spark that cohesively unites these captivated songs that span different energies, moods, and arrangements. With easy comparisons to Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Hüsker Dü, and Pavement, “Any Day Now” oscillates from a vocal chorus refrain to spoken word elements to fuzz guitar galore. This is the kind of music you wanna skateboard in 1995 to, and SPICE took that notion literally.
Watch the skater-influenced video, directed by SPICE and edited by Brian Sowell. Tony Walker skates around town in this 90s-style journey.
Named for a precursor project of bassist Cody Sullivan and violinist Victoria Skudlarek, Viv also alludes to broader notions of vividness, sonic, visual, and otherwise. Engineered by Jack Shirley and mixed/mastered by Sam Pura in Oakland, the mix achieves that rare balance of every element being elevated but distinct, with voices, strings, and drums each given space to blaze parallel paths. Rawness refined into reckonings; approaching truth, born of cold mornings, bad luck, and too many wrong turns. Waking up where you’re not supposed to be, living a life you don’t recognize,” says the band.
Vocalist Ross Farrar explains the group’s chemistry succinctly: “We all got in a room and this is what came out.”
Viv is set for release on May 20th via Dais Records, and is available for pre-order here.
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