200 Words: SCROLL DOWNERS
(In 200 Words, we highlight a new record we like a lot, via a 200-word review by Marc Masters and 200 words (or so) from the artist about whatever they choose.)
SCROLL DOWNERS â Hot Winter (Ehse)
When winterâs hot it means the sun is close. Scroll Downers went seeking the sun one winter and got pretty fucking close on their own. It didnât matter that Lexie Mountain was just starting her recorded journey with David Jacober and Zacahary Utz (late of Dope Body). In fact I suspect the bandâs collaborative virginity meant they started out closer to the sun than a more familiar configuration might have. The trio hadnât worn a path yet and thus could just lean back, stare at the solar surface, and burn a direct connection into their collective cornea.
On Hot Winter Scroll Downers light a fire by rubbing together big sandpaper riffs, concrete beats, and Mountainâs trampolining howl. All three heat sources burn calories like a triangular treadmill, but I canât help warming my ears over Mountainâs escalating lung excavation. Her rising phoenix of a voice hyper-inflates tracks like âShake Off the Raysâ and the atheist-converter âI Want to Believeâ in ways that make me think I could ride a hot air balloon to Saturn. But I should just fly it into the sun, if Iâm a worthy disciple of the immolating doctrine that Hot Winter has singed into my brain.
â Marc Masters
LEXIE MOUNTAIN on Hot Winter
Some years it seems as if June lasts forever. Heading back to Baltimore after a Philadelphia show that felt as Baltimore as any Philadelphia show ever could, we found ourselves suddenly in standstill traffic. About an eighth of a mile ahead, a necklace of lights, flashing emergency lights, cop lights, ambulance lights, strung itself across the northbound lanes of 76 somewhere near the airport. For twenty minutes we sat in the rented Rav 4, talking about how Naeemâs party was just taking off right as we had decided to try for our beds in another city close by, and now here we were, stuck. I looked to my right, where a highway onramp curved around a hairpin turn. A car appeared from someplace behind us, kicked up pebbles outside the traveling lane, and, while we watched in disbelief, proceeded to drive the wrong way up the onramp in reverse, hugging the contour of the inner shoulder. There was a beat in which it seemed every car, just as stuck as we, realized it was possible to escape, right here, right now. Just go up a highway onramp the wrong way. Do it. Within moments, car after car reversed up the onramp, until the onramp became its own exit and we drove right the fuck up it in two lanes, waving at cars trying to get onto 76. Weâre warning you, donât go down there and get stuck in all that. Turn around, try the wrong way, and get out while you can.
Hot Winter is out on now on Ehse. Buy it here.
