What do we know about 7-11 Jesus? Well, they’re a trio from Boston, MA, although the band originates from San Francisco in 2018, and comprises August Darula (vox/guitar), Will Bryan (drums), and Adam Rioux (bass). They released a couple of albums, then disappeared for about five years. And now they’re back with ‘White Noise’, an album featuring 11 songs which are nothing if not varied – often to the extent that the verses and choruses sound like they belong to different songs, if not quite different bands.
The first, ‘Taker Leaver’ has an intro that suggests something gothic is afoot, before lurching into some angular math-rock with a post-punk edge… and then swerves into some dreamy shoegaze- flavoured indie for the verse, after which the mathy noise riff returns. And so it alternates, before a heavy finish. It works better in practice than on paper.
These are the elements which they play with, in various permutations, across the album: ‘Dying Horses’ adds the classic quite / loud grunge dynamic to the list of ingredients, and elsewhere there are shades of US indie. ‘Killdozer’ feels like a stab at an anthem that draws on Pixies and the broader late 80s / early 90s alt milieu by way of influence – at least until it floats off elsewhere around the mid-point and finally culminate in a crashing wave of feedback.
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Initial impressions may well be that ‘White Noise’ lacks identity and focus, but it bears spending time with to acclimatise to its quirks. There is a lot going on: ‘Shipping Container’ is super-breezy, but then brings one of the album’s heaviest riffs – which is an outright speaker-busting chug – and squalling solo – before slipping back into indie boppalong mode as if nothing had happened.
If you like songs which are comfortably genre-aligned and conform to conventional structures, steer clear. If you can handle schizophrenic genre-hopping and the wildly unpredictable, not to mention the sometimes slightly wonky, subtly slackerish, you’ll probably dig this.
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