Chasing Fridays: Greet Death, Blue Smiley, Schema, and more

Heyo, it's another edition of Chasing Fridays – my weekly dispatch of music criticism and sometimes gig reviews. No gig reviews this week, but I'll be attending a show next week that I'm incredibly excited for, and I'm planning a big, standalone article about it that'll be unlike anything I've ever published on here. If all goes according to plan, it's going to be cool as fuck, so wish me luck that all the pieces fall into place. In this week's Chasing Fridays, I wrote about some new singles from Greet Death and Blue Smiley, an album by the hardcore band Torena, and a 24-year-old record from the post-rock group Schema that I just heard for this first time. Check it out down below.

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Greet Death - "Same But Different Now"

Yes! Finally! I've been waiting to hear this song on recording since spring 2022, when I saw Greet Death rip through it at a show in Pittsburgh during their tour with Infant Island. I remember them introducing it onstage as a new song – but not one of the new songs from their soon-arriving 2022 EP New Low. A song from whatever they'd do next. I remember being physically engrossed by the way they thrashed and burned through the fastest song they've ever written, and how the hairs on my neck stood at attention and my sweaty fingers clenched as they kept growing louder, rowdier, and noisier as the locomotive beat careened forward. Greet Death had always dealt in punishingly heavy doomgaze trudges, and guitar-bursting firework displays were well represented within their oeuvre. "Same but Different Now," however, is unlike anything they've ever released, while still sounding unmistakably like Greet Death.

They've gotten good at transformations. On the stunningly stark and understatedly sticky New Low, the Michigan miserabilists reinvented themselves as wistful country-gazers, losing most of the dirge-driven doomgaze that filled their twin landmarks, 2019's New Low and 2017's Dixieland, and opting for an acoustic-laden slowcore sound that naturally suited their grave outpourings of existential dread. They realized that they had taken the floor-caving climaxes as far as they could go on "You're Gonna Hate What You've Done" and "New Hell," and by restraining themselves from dropping the predictable distortion bombs, New Low's syrupy ballads had an even more chilling effect; extremity by way of deprivation, thus forcing their listeners to confront their brutal lyrics without the comforting chaser of a rad guitar solo.

"Same But Different Now" is back to the bleariness, but something has changed. Logan Gaval's voice is sheathed in more reverb than usual, and his quivering croak sounds like it's rising up from the river's edge in the dead of night, aqueous and ghastly. The tension of the first verse and chorus is all building to what Greet Death do best: rubberband-snapping transitions into chaos. "We're different now," Gaval howls as the guitars sear like a funeral pyre at the peak of its blaze. The song's watery riff and brisk tempo remind me of DIIV, but not the modern, politically shrewd, studio-fiend version of DIIV. The old DIIV. Well, a dreamt-up version of the old DIIV, with monstrous teeth and an evil glint in their eyes. A nightmarish rendering of DIIV's trance-like throbs. One that's more Stooges pyro than Velvets precision. And now I want more of it.

Blue Smiley - "Pond"

I've made it a central feature of my contemporary shoegaze coverage to illustrate that Blue Smiley are one of the most influential shoegaze bands of the last 20 years. By the end of this decade, I wouldn't be surprised if they've left as much of a mark on the genre as Dinosaur Jr. did on the Eighties and My Bloody Valentine on the 90s. Every band ripping off They Are Gutting a Body of Water (and there are dozens) are, by proxy, ripping off Blue Smiley, whose clangy, spikey riffs, chorus-addled guitars, deflated-balloon slowcore vocals, and smudgy basement production refashioned shoegaze for the Bandcamp era of broke bedroom pop savants. Their lone albums, 2015's ok and 2016's return, are still in a class of their own, but sadly, the band's arc was cut painfully short when mastermind songwriter Brian Nowell died in 2017.

Beyond the profound tragedy of Nowell's loss on a human level, it's crushing to know that we'll never get to hear the next step(s) in his artistic evolution. While ok stumbled into greatness out the gate, return was an exponential creative leap, and if you're like me, then you can lose many an hour imagining where they might've gone on the next release. "Pond," a shelved b-side from return that finally saw the light of day this week via Blue Smiley's posthumous label, Topshelf Records, confirms my suspicion that even greater feats were on the horizon. All the signatures are there: needle-threading licks, a whippets headrush blast of fuzz, and a zig-zagging structure that still somehow resolves coherently. But it's the little details that elevate: the bongo groove laid atop the drums, the moaning whale feedback purring right before the distorted blast, the plinking glockenspiel that traipses alongside Nowell's svelte cries. Fuck, they were really on one. We're lucky to still hear it.

Schema - Schema

I've been listening to a lot of old shoegaze on YouTube lately, and my algorithm recommended this album to me the other day, which I checked out purely because the art looked cool. It's not shoegaze at all whatsoever. Turns out Schema is the side-project of the late Stereolab singer Mary Hansen, and this was the sole album the group released before her untimely death in 2002. It's got the jammy, electronica-infused post-rock vibes of Tortoise or Fridge, but with that gleaming voice of hers that always made Stereolab sound so exotically French, as opposed to the Anglo-American sound of most other post-rock bands of the Nineties and early 2000s. There's some heroic guitarwork in the 12-minute centerpiece "Echolalia...Curvilinear" that rivals the most epic Mogwai jams. "Far From Where We Began," on other hand, has the ineffable "ba-ba-ba" scatting over a torqued-up drum-and-bass groove that'll be more familiar to Stereolab/Broadcast listeners. Whether you're looking to explore the source material for the Dummy's and Peel Dream Magazine's of today, or just aiming to fill in some leaves on your FFO: Bark Psychosis, Disco Inferno family tree, then Schema is well worth a listen.

Torena - No Control

I don't know why I expected to dislike this record. I think I had listened to Torena's 2023 EP, Evil Eyez, and written it off as another generic hunk of metalcore shrapnel coming out of California. Although there're some younger bands from the Bay Area & Friends scene who still catch my ear, I'm beginning to grow a little weary of the Sunami wave of death metallized beatdown, and since Torena are touring with Sunami this fall, I think I unfairly wrote them off as just another one of those bands. The thing is, Torena are one of those bands, but I think their debut LP, No Control, makes the perennial argument that there's juice to be squeezed from this style when it's done this well.

There're face-mauling mosh parts on here, but also some thrashier gallops ("I'll Never Be Like You") and some chanty refrains ("False Compassion") that make these feel more like songs, not just vessels for breakdowns. At its best, No Control reminds me of the underrated Apex Predator LP from late last year, or maybe God's Hate without Brody King's inimitable voice. At its worse, it sounds like something that would still set the dancefloor ablaze. That's what this music is made for, anyways. From what I hear, Torena are killing shit on the Sunami tour that's set to weigh anchor in Pittsburgh next Friday. I'll have the full report on your desks the following week.