#supernowhere

Photo courtesy of Dylan Hanwright

Amid a super busy, big name new music release calendar, it can sometimes be easy to overlook the understated. supernowhere, the Seattle-by-way-of-Vermont trio of bassist and singer Meredith Davey, guitarist and vocalist Kurt Pacing and drummer Matt Anderson make the most of docile, ornate post-indie rock without relying much on PR fluff to color in its value, and on “The Hand”, the second single from their forthcoming sophomore effort Skinless Takes A Flight, you can why.

With words culled from a dream of Pacing’s subconscious, the three conjure the mind’s energy in real life form over a rolling levitation of guitars plucking at the sky and harmonies formed in air. “Flying over hills, hills of green, all the pretty homes / I cannot see through my devotion, to those walls / Flying over heads, feeling free, grabbed by the hand it pulls me ‘round,” he sings. They’re among the clouds with no distraction.

Gavin Schlerf further animated the experience as a visual meditation. Let “The Hand” lift you below...

Photo courtesy of Dylan Hanwright

supernowhere are a band who came out of, well, nowhere (but technically, Seattle by way of a few detours that ultimately began in Vermont...,) earlier this year when Topshelf Records reissued their three-year-old debut LP Gestalt to recommended effect and promise of what may soon come from the indie rock trio comprised of bassist and singer Meredith Davey, guitarist and vocalist Kurt Pacing and drummer Matt Anderson. Recorded alongside Great Grandpa guitarist Dylan Hanwright, the band reweaved guitar rock dynamics emotive, meticulous. and melodically crunched through the boards in a manner where the nuance could only be defined by their own hands and thoughts.

Next spring, supernowhere returns with their sophomore follow-up Skinless Takes A Flight (again produced by Hanwright,) and carrying with that news is its lead single “Basement Window”. The song takes its time to process itself in shaping its sound and rumination, as the listen is more of a quiet build toward a rumbling climax. Inspired by a serpentine dream, it metaphorically doubles as a subconscious red flag on a personal relationship and transmits those thoughts through percussive-pattering confusion and Davey’s vocals pushing through the spindles “I saw there was a snake inside my basement and when I peered in to see / One quick emerged to chase me with a smirk upon its hopeful teeth,” her voice breaks over a cacophony of jazz-punk. “Oh, now can you hear the fantasy breaking the ghost guessed that you would be so cruel.”

The band self-directed its video with some creative help from their friends that percolates their sound and imagery accordingly through stop-animation. Watch and listen below...

In the age of music as Content and a constant inundation of it, it probably should not surprise anyone that a self-released album could get lost in the mix for years and then resurface in remastered form with a proper label, and sound new as the day that it was given a second life. That is the story of Gestalt, the debut full-length from Seattle rockers supernowhere(formerly and coincidentally known as Gastalt themselves) who’ve signed with Topshelf Records and reissued the album under the mixing hands of Dylan Hanwright (Great Grandpa, Gulfer.)

It’s strange to, in retrospect, give a proper review to an album that has been living out there somewhere on the Internet for three years now, but after giving the album a full listen, it’s obvious that the trio of bassist and singer Meredith Davey, guitarist and vocalist Kurt Pacing and drummer Matt Anderson made a sound that deserves to be re-discovered since its original creation in Burlington, Vermont back in 2018 -- a setting that had to have served its influence of autumnal peaks in the cozily quiet, trickling guitarwork of tracks like “Hairspine” and “Paper”. Now based out of Seattle, supernowhere’s Pac-Northwest premonitions can also be heard in its crunchier acceleration points of “Fast Pilgrim” and “Double Happiness”.

The band’s super power may in fact be the allure of their hard-to-place pinpoint on the genre map, however, beyond Gestalt being a highly promising entry point into the underground rock world. Guilt by association with Topshelf’s earliest years, a song at the contemplative pacing (and titling) of “Truly A Great Night Like Many Other Nights” draws thin lines alongside modern emo rock, while later moments like the juxtaposition of “Thaw” and “Unthaw” roll with methodically harder corners that may suffice the palettes of intellectual post-hardcore stans digging into Unwound and the Evens. Davey’s phosphorescent voice share space with Pacing’s hush throughout, yet they equally bring the atmosphere closer to their emotions. In case you missed it, it’s well worth familiarizing yourself with the whole of Gestalt now.

Gestalt by supernowhere