Curling are cross-continental duo Bernie Gelman and Joseph Brandel. Gelman operates out of the San Francisco Bay Area while Brandel currently resides in Japan.
They are augmented by drummer Kynwyn Sterling who was recruited from Portland, OR and the album was recorded at Brothers Chinese Recording in Oakland, CA.
The ‘deluxe edition’ features two instrumental bonus tracks : Cavalry and C2 both featuring transitional drummer Kevin Stewart.
The fourteen songs as a whole are short, shoegazey and snappy featuring the jangle of power-pop and the intricacy of Pavement-like indie-folk. You can hear the influence old XTC albums and Beatles classics.
The original plan was to abandon the six-string guitars of their previous two albums but somehow this never materialised. The title track, however, acknowledges the original concept through a “wordless tangle of electronics” created by synths, fuzz pedals and loops.
The high energy Hi-Elixir is intended as "a 2-and-a-half-minute mini-symphony full of unusual chords and keychanges."
During the pandemic, Curling went on hiatus for three years so the album was five years in the making.
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They somehow came back together to write an album under the shadow of challenging events and describe the finished work as a ”jubilant celebration of death, birth, unemployment, sex and love.
A standout track is Hotel, described by Brandel as “a song about that feeling of grief, as well as the intangible loss of words that you never said.”
The mood of the record is perhaps best summed up by two tracks, URDoM and Patience which are both built around the the idea of taking pleasure in pain. (‘Do M’ in Japanese means to be a masochist).
‘No Guitar’ is therefore a flawed yet fascinating attempt to build something triumphant out of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Bandcamp link
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