#squawk!

Dusted unpacked the dual songwriter structure of SAVAK last time out, noting that while Sohrab Habibion and Michael Jaworski come from slightly different parts of punk rock universe, they now meet in a fruitful middle.  I wrote, “These guys have been playing together long enough that, even the headiest psychedelic jangle has a hard, rhythmic core, and even the bumpiest post-punk salvo culminates in shimmering guitar overload.  Two different sensibilities don’t exactly merge, but make room for each other, adapt to each other, and emerge all the stronger.”

That’s undoubtedly still true now, in songs whose ragged, lyrical romanticism butts up against flaring punk agitation, whose juddering propulsion drives towards mystic horizons.  “Moon over Marine Park” skitters atop a taut cadence of guitar pulse and tight, unsyncopated drums.  Yet the vocals alternate between probing, near-spoken word and anthemic, tuneful shouts.  It’s a thought experiment and a hands-in-the-air banger, the parts so artfully joined that you don’t always clock when one thing changes into another. 

“Child’s Pose,” by contrast, sprawls and ravages, its waves of guitar sound crashing over the steady thump of bass, its chorus spiraling out in bright arcs and curlicues.  The tune would be straight on psychedelia, a la the Resonars or the Bevis Frond, if it didn’t drive so hard.  As it is, the references are more like Protomartyr, Guardian Singles and FACs. 

The sound changes dramatically in a late-album track called “Your Mother Is a Mirror,” a slow-burning, mystic cut interleaved with squalling strings.  Stripped down but powerful, it lets the silence in, a break in the action but not in the intensity.  It’s the sound of a band so sure of itself that it’s willing to break character and do the unexpected. In the process, SAVAK redefines itself as something larger and more resonant than ever.