Chasing Fridays: Ex-Pilots, Nails, Dimension Six, and more

Heyo and welcome back to Chasing Fridays — my weekly roundup of music criticism and (sometimes) gig reviews. I haven't written any gig reviews in a couple weeks but I'll be seeing a couple shows next week, and I'm sure one of them will turn up in next Friday's edition of this column. So just hold your horses if you're hankering for my on-the-ground reporting. Meanwhile, in case you missed it, I shared a 100-song playlist earlier this week alongside 15 blurbs about some of my favorite tracks in it. It's a pretty eclectic playlist/article and I had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you'll take a peek if you haven't already.

As for this article, I decided to keep things relatively brief and write about just four pieces of music — all of which I enjoy quite a bit! I've got a review of the new Ex-Pilots record for all you shoegaze heads, as well as my thoughts on the punishing (complimentary) new Nails album. I also wrote about how one hardcore band from Virginia are really leaning into the budding 2008 revival, and then tossed some flowers on a band with a silly name who I think many of my readers will enjoy. Check it all out down below, but first...

...if you like what I wrote down below and/or in any other article I publish on Chasing Sundays, then I'd appreciate it if you subscribed at the $5/month tier. My paid subscribers (thank you!) provide me with a crucial income stream so I can maximize the number of hours I dedicate to this blog, and also just writing in general. I'm very fortunate to make my living with words, but that's getting harder and harder in this economic climate, so any support is greatly appreciated.

Ex-Pilots - Motel Cable

If you like indie-rock and live in Pittsburgh, then you know that Ex-Pilots have a real presence here right now. They've been releasing music for almost a decade, recently toured with Cherry Glazerr, and just dropped their new record, Motel Cable, on Smoking Room Records (TAGABOW, Hotline TNT), which seems to be earning them a decent buzz even outside of their home city. Almost every member of Ex-Pilots also plays in the Pittsburgh shoegaze band Gaadge, who are one of my favorite indie bands in the city. While Gaadge and Ex-Pilots sound somewhat similar, Ex-Pilots is really the songwriting project of Gaadge drummer Ethan Oliva, and the idea with this band is to do Guided By Voices worship. At least that's what Ex-Pilots used to be.

Motel Cable is an elevated version of what Ex-Pilots had been up to this point. Oliva played almost all of the instruments on the band's early 2023 album, but this record boasts contributions from their newly-minted six-piece lineup. Sonically, there's a lot more shoegaze influence in the mix here, and it doesn't just sound like a cash-in on a trendy genre given that most of this band also play in an above-par shoegaze group. The glide-guitar on "Thirty Days" and the hellacious feedback in "Motel" are nice flourishes that provide a hefty counterweight to the bleary-eyed indie-pop tunes that fill out the rest of the tracklist. A song like "Hannah" s ripped straight from the book of Robert Pollard yet delivered with so much sincerity and tact that I just have to raise my glass. Wonderful song.

I think it's worth noting that while I certainly enjoy Motel Cable, I never really cared for Ex-Pilots' previous records and I was never all that taken by them in the live setting. As recently as earlier this spring, when I saw Ex-Pilots open for Cloud Nothings at a good-sounding venue, I still left frustratingly underwhelmed by what I was hearing coming off the stage. I think they're better suited to be heard on an album like Motel Cable, where the band are able to coat the whole mix in dusty effects and use the DAW to finesse feedback and harmonies in between the cracks of the songs. A more adventurous standout like "Glory Thread" has a sense of 4D dynamics that doesn't come across in their live show, at least not in the times that I've seen them.

I heard their release show last weekend — which was opened by Pittsburgh hardcore miscreants Speed Plans, who allegedly tossed a birthday cake into the crowd of indie-rockers before blazing through their set — was a riot and that the band are in better form than ever. After spending some time with Motel Cable, I'm looking forward to catching them again with an open mind and hopefully being won over. Songs like "Hannah" and "Motel" deserve to sound fucking glorious onstage. They certainly sound so on Motel Cable.

Dimension Six - Remain

The year 2008 is about to be mined for all that it's worth in hardcore. Kids Like Us and The Mongoloids are reuniting at FYA. The hottest band on the underground circuit right now are doing shameless Rival Mob worship. And above all else, utterly hideous cover art is coming back in fashion by bands who sound like they're vying for an opening slot on Cruel Hand's Prying Eyes tour. That's what Dimension Six are doing on their incredible sounding, butt-ugly looking new EP, Remain, and I'm certainly not mad about it.

The Virginia band are pulling directly from their home state heroes like Down to Nothing and Naysayer on these tracks, and somehow they've made that sound, which was wildly oversaturated in the early 2010s, sound fresh again. Dimension Six's chunky, Terror-indebted NY-ish-HC never approaches beatdown levels of brutality on Remain, but still delivers a couple teeth-knocking mosh parts (the ones in "Count Me Out" and "Won't Play" are delectable) that'll hold the attention of the Sunami generation. It definitely doesn't hurt that the production on here is perfectly crisp, and you can hear in these songs that Dimension Six don't think metal is cooler than hardcore. For a heavy hardcore band in 2024, all of that goes a long way.

Nails - Every Bridge Burning

Nails are one of my favorite hardcore bands of the 2010s. That's not an unpopular opinion, though it did seem to become "uncool" to jock them around the time of their 2016 opus, You Will Never Be One of Us. By that point, the band's reach had expanded well beyond hardcore, and the group's misanthropic attitude was pushed to the precipice of self-parody via that album's egomaniacal title. Since then, every member except principle songwriter Todd Jones left the band, and they've been more or less inactive since 2019. A couple years ago, Jones reminded any skeptics that he still had the juice when he co-wrote/produced Terror's remarkable late-career effort, Pain Into Power, which basically sounded like a Nails record channeled through the lens of Terror (a band Jones played in/sonically molded during their early days).

Now, he's reminding us that Nails haven't dulled either. Every Bridge Burning is what any longtime Nails fan could possibly want from them nearly two decades into their career. At this point in their sonic progression, there's almost no way they could get any heavier, so Every Bridge Burning is all about proving they can maintain it. "Lacking the Ability to Process Empathy" is meaner than any of their peers have the ability to display on record. Jones' vein-popping yowls on the title-track and "I Can't Turn Off" are inhumanly scorching. It's been long enough since YWNBOOU that the standard no-bullshit Nails assault is what people want to hear, and they bring it. The only evolution in their formula are the barn-blazing thrash solos on "Give Me the Painkiller," which might technically be the most melodic moments in Nails' entire catalog.

I'll always be partial to Nails' belligerently nasty debut, Unsilent Death, and I don't think this record has any tracks that quite surpass YWNBOOU standouts like "Life Is a Death Sentence" and "Violence Is Forever." But Every Bridge Burning is a fucking ear-clobbering album that furthers the arc of one of the most menacing sounding bands I've ever heard. I'll be checking their live show off my bucket list at FYA in Florida early next year, and I have no doubt that the new tracks will slot in seamlessly alongside the classics. I'm already readying my limbs for a beating.

Sex Week - "Naked"

A couple of months ago I revealed my tepid enjoyment of a band called Sex Week. I thought the first few singles from their debut EP, out today, were surprisingly effective Alex G rips that traded his dark storytelling for absurdist toad humor. Now I'm back to take a stand: I've become a full-on Sex Week fan. I heard their single "Naked" earlier this week — and watched its hilarious and touching reality dating show-style video — and I just had to shake my head. It's great. It's so fucking catchy. The oft-repeated, nasally croaked hook, "I don't want her to see me naked/But I want her to see me naked," is so simple it's dumb and so dumb that it's simply delightful. The line-by-line handoffs from the co-lead singers have that eternally pleasing boy-girl chemistry. Don't mistake their doofily provocative name for anything other than good fun. They're not edgy, they're sweet. I like sweet stuff. I like Sex Week.