REVIEW: “Sux” (EP) - The Great Depression
The Great Depression’s debut EP, Sux, doesn’t suck. It actually kinda rules. When I first hit play I thought, shit, if the Beatles drank forties and cried in their beds sometimes and played in basements and listened to Julia, it might sound like track “Purple Skirt” does.
The band resides in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and though some people call them shoegaze, songwriter Ben Luckman assures me, “we aren’t. We smoke a lot of the pot.” In fact, I can picture these songs being played in a sound room that smells like “self-loathing and dank,” the inspiration for the EP according to Luckman.
The album is (sorry) a little shoegaze-y / emo production. Cleverly enough, they sort of twinkle the way that those bands that they insist “If Algernon Never Gets Back Together We Are Just Going To Keep Hearing Shitty Twinkle Songs from Shitty Twinkle Bands” twinkle. But, they’ve got a more unique vibe than a lot of the emo circuit does. It might be the female vocals, which are beautiful and soft as opposed to the wiry and shrieky male vocals that we all know and love in the emo scene. It might be the calmer, slightly more sophisticated and more layered guitar production. It might be the little retro vocal elements. It might be the dank. Whatever it is, it’s working out pretty well for the band and I’m stoked to hear what they do next. Look for them on the NJ show circuit and, starting in August, Philly, too.
- Jordy Lyric, Editor In Chief
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