Giant Drag – Hearts and Unicorns

Giant Drag
Hearts and Unicorns

It was instant-like with Giant Drag for me. I’ve got a softy spot for bands with just a guy and a girl in the lineup. What always surprises me is the amount and power of the noise that is possible with a imple drums and guitar lineup. Oh sure, there’s overdubs. But still there’s a pretty powerful presence on their album “Hearts and Unicorns”.

The band is sort of like a reverse Quasi lineup; there’s Micah on drums and Annie on guitar and vocals. But they’re definitely more dreamy and less playful and self effacing than Quasi. Other duos that they resemble are Viva Voce, who are similar in hellraisin’ style but definitely more electronic, and Elk City who share a similar atmospheric vibe but tend toward more folkier moments.

There’s going to be some comparisons to shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine of course, what with the powerfully distorted guitars that swim throughout most of the songs. The song “Cordial Invitation” totally has those guitar bends and fogbank cloud of noise hovering underneath the music. But they mostly avoid MBV’s mid-treble emphasis and crackling broken distortion which is probably a good thing as far as radio play goes. The distortion is often more like, er, grungey. There, I said it… whew.

The first thing that jumps out you right away is Annie’s voice which is playful and innocent, but low and growly. I have read some comparisons to Hope Sandoval but Annie doesn’t really seem as sultry and drugged down. In any case, it really fits on top of the music nicely.

One of my favorite tracks was “YFLMD” which sounds like Chan Marshall covering Radiohead’s “I Might Be Wrong”. “Pretty Little Neighbor” is equally strong with these quick bass drum beats and a mood that is sorta like the Sonic Youth song “Schizophrenia”. Other fun stuff includes the monotone guitar blasting of “High Friends In Places” and “My D*** S***” which both have chords that sounds like something off of Nirvana’s Bleach and the ethereal moonwalking delayed guitar of “Smashing”.

The band is in the SoCal area which is cool because I’d be up for catching their show sometime (I think they are playing with The Like). In conclusion, Giant Drag gets four out of four stars and all that blah blah jazz…

[Footnote: that knife in Annie's leg on the front cover looks kind of painful...]

by Tyranosaur