(Album Artwork By: Nick Dap)

Slush

Parallel Basements

(self-released)

Columbia based post-punk quintet Slush has, with the help of Archer Avenue Studio, released their sophomore EP effort Parallel Basements this passed February. The five track EP doesn’t veer too far from their 2018 release About Years. Both follow Slush’s dreamy, post-acid approach with delicate yet meticulous guitar solos, rumbling spirit building kick drum and high hat moments, and include Ben Beier’s laissez-faire vocal abilities which convinces every listener to let go.

Parallel Basements opener “Trigger” grabs you a second in with a tantalizing bass line which builds alongside the guitar like an accelerating car until all the instruments dive in. From first glance a song title like “Trigger” may imply, more innocently, something simply bothering someone but the lyrics seem to take a darker turn. “Trigger” seems to instead be discussing pulling the trigger of a gun, “Something brings me ever closer/to pulling the trigger/oh I don’t know why”. The struggle between going home, what home even means, and if ending ones life is the closest they’ll ever get to it. Taking a Third Eye Blind approach were despite the happy little melody there’s a melancholy message with the Atlas Genius-esque sound appeal.

What impresses me most about Parallel Basements is the glaringly honest lyrical content. This slaps the listener in the face with “25” which addresses our obsession with ourselves in our current socio-economic world, “Everybody surrounding/has only eyes for themselves/what is this beautiful world/it’s a brand new/very fresh hell”.

The EP rests on it’s concluding song “Ripple” which cries out, “I don’t really know what I want”! The plea isn’t lost on deaf ears with a crescendo and decrescendo which feels like the natural ebb and flow of any ones day to day life; since in reality we are always just in the wake of someone else.