Chasing Fridays: Julie, Militarie Gun, Webbed Wing, more

Aaand I'm back with another edition of Chasing Fridays — my weekly roundup of music criticism and (sometimes) gig reviews. At this time last week, I was relaxing porch-side at a rustic cottage with my family on Keuka Lake, hence why you didn't get an edition of Chasing Fridays in your inbox that day. This week, I was back at the desk, and I had thoughts on some new releases by several guitar-based musical acts.

I also announced something big this week: I'm writing a book! About shoegaze! I detailed the project in this post, but that will be consuming almost all of my time for the next year-plus, and I'm very stoked to reveal to you all what I've been working on. While I'm embarking on that giant undertaking, I'll be keeping Chasing Sundays as active as possible, and hopefully maintaining my weekly posting schedule for this Chasing Fridays column. Articles like this will be a bit more infrequent at first, but once I get a good rhythm going, I'll be able to put more time into longer pieces for this site.

If you like what I wrote down below, or anything else I've ever published 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.

julie - "clairbourne practice"

People have asked me why I've never written anything substantial about young shoegazers julie, who signed to Atlantic Records last year and just tapped They Are Gutting a Body of Water and Her New Knife to open their upcoming tour. That situates them right in the world I cover, but to be honest, I didn't think julie's early singles were really all that shoegazey. There's some foamy fuzz curling around the edges of their big breakout, "Flutter," but I always placed them closer to Sonic Youth than My Bloody Valentine, and I didn't expect them to become more traditionally shoegazey on their major label debut. But they did.

Their latest cut, "clairbourne practice," sits squarely in the pre-1990 MBV pocket. It's got the nervy, jostling momentum of "Feed Me With Your Kiss," and atmosphere that's cruddier and grimier than it is glimmering. I just wish the song fully committed to what it's going for. With only one guitar in their ensemble, the distortion sounds lightweight and hollow, like a semi-truck carrying an empty trailer. They try to fill out the loud parts by cranking the bass, but the whole mix sounds too clean and spacious to achieve the intended smothering effect. It's interesting to hear a popular band in this Gen-Z wave who are completely eschewing the grunge-gaze/slow-gaze/Whirr-gaze sounds and dialing in a primitive iteration of the genre. It proves that there's a genuine appetite for many different types of shoegaze right now, and that newer fans of the genre also have an affinity for the "classic" sound.

However, I would've hoped that a major label budget could've produced something more sonically expansive than this, which sounds like lo-fi kids who were too skittish in the studio to use the ritzy tools at their disposal. Shoegaze is a much more spartan and dingey sounding genre now than it was in the early Nineties, when some of the greatest records (Ride's Going Blank Again, Boo Radleys' Everything's Alright Forever, motherfuckin' Souvlaki) sounded expensive as fuck. I don't want to hear the new generation remake those records, but I'd love to hear them channel that level of studio ambition when their labels can afford it. If julie are just going to use those resources to make songs like "clairbourne practice," then they're better off recording in a Philly basement. Let the true visionaries have the keys to the castle.

Militarie Gun - "Thought You Were Waving"

I was ready for Militarie Gun to be a pop band going into last year's Life Under the Gun album. And I was ready for Militarie Gun to be a pop band during the three times I saw them earlier this year — twice at hardcore festivals, where I felt like their greatest strengths (sugary hooks, mopish charm) were being underserved by the moshy environment. They started as a raggedy post-hardcore band who could improbably stumble into a great melody, and now they've proven themselves master hook-smiths ("Very High," "Pressure Cooker," "Never Fucked Up Once," "Seizure of Assets," etc.) and I really want to hear them go all-in on that side of their sound. I don't need them to be "hardcore adjacent" anymore. I think they're a better indie band than they are a post-hardcore band. Therefore, I'm so very glad that Militarie Gun are a pop band on "Thought You Were Waving." A song that sounds exactly as Militarie Gun should.

Webbed Wing - Vol. III

This is one of those bands that makes me do the Arrested Development "her?" when people say they love them. I was a huge fan of Superheaven during their heyday, and Webbed Wing are two dudes from Superheaven (including their singer-songwriter Taylor Madison) making music that basically sounds like a boring version of Superheaven. I've gone into each one of this group's records hoping they'd click with me, and after 2019's Bike Ride Across the Moon and 2021's What's So Fucking Funny? failed to connect, I was hopeful that their live show would at least win me over. [Arrested Development narrator voice]: It didn't.

Now they're back with another LP, arriving one year after Superheaven's 2013 song "Youngest Daughter" shot onto Billboard's Hot Hard Rock Songs chart thanks to a random TikTok takeoff. I'm sure the band have a series of legitimate reasons for not actively capitalizing on that absurd hype with a year-round tour cycle and a new record, but from my naive vantage point as a mere onlooker, it seems preposterous that they're doing Webbed Wing instead. Mostly because Webbed Wing's new album, Vol. III, just isn't very interesting. Superheaven's whole thing was making big, meaty, Muffy grunge that sounded like a forgotten band from 1993. Their two records, 2013's Jar and 2015's Ours Is Chrome, aren't bulletproof, but there're a helluva lot of great songs between the two of them.

Webbed Wing make more or less the same kind of music, except with more power-pop sparkle than punk-rock grit. Opener "Further" is a catchy tune, and "Tortuga" follows with another good hook and some killer soloing. But it just doesn't hit like Superheaven does, and the album's back-half fails to outdo "Further"'s grand entrance. There's not enough juxtaposition between Madison's gargantuan power-chords and the shuffling, Teenage Fanclub-y rhythms for the salty-sweet balance to come through. I had the same issue with them when I caught their show early last year, where they appeared to be trying on a tamer, more songwriterly physicality (stiff stances, restrained stage movement), and just not selling it. Because they're burly dudes from Eastern Pennsylvania, and their proverbial flannels look better unbuttoned than buttoned.

Plus, they don't even fully commit to the power-pop thing on Vol. III. The fret-bending solo on "Tortuga" veers into the domain of 2010s groups like Diarrhea Planet, Violent Soho, White Reaper, and Rozwell Kid: Loud, guitar-y alt-rock bands who cheekily tip their cap to Seventies stadium-rock via shred-tastic solos and big 'ole riffs. That type of music was my bread and butter for a long time, and I just don't really buy the winking rawkiness from the Webbed Wing guys. I want to hear them write depressing, heavy-on-the-soul grunge bangers like Superheaven's "I've Been Bored" and "In On It." Leave this new-gen power-pop stuff to the Lame-O Records bands.

Daze - "She Said"

Don't let the generic band name fool you: Daze's new single is worth your time. The Houston 'gazers are one of many active Texas bands with a penchant for bottom-heavy grunge-gaze, except "She Said" avoids many of the pitfalls that've made that style feel so redundant to me. The pretty parts are actually pretty, and then the heavy outpourings of fuzz are carefully layered so it doesn't just sound like a rudimentary chord progression seasoned with distortion. The catchy-ass bassline carries the melody during the climax, and the surrounding guitars are a two-pronged attack: one emitting smoldering feedback, the other crunching riffs. Daze have played with Cursetheknife, Trauma Ray, Cold Gawd, and many others in that lane — a sub-style of shoegaze that I've been openly bored with for a long time. "She Said" cuts through the doldrums.