Gauntlet Hair

They need to find their identity, and they're going to have to move forward and progress even further as a group if they want to move beyond being a flavor of the month.

Conspired in their Windy City origins at Andy's grandmother's house, Gauntlet Hair the LP is otherwise a fantastical recording, a complete artistic metamorphosis from the pair's raw-dog early 7-inches for Forest Family and Mexican Summer that finds Andy and Craig refining their edge to reveal the silver lining behind their inherit sonic clutter.

A few listens into Gauntlet Hair and its charms start to coalesce.

Their first full length proves to be a commanding venture with unrelenting attitude.

It actually feels quite sterile in a lot of places; a bit too afraid to show its cards, a bit too afraid to get its hands dirty.

There is literally nothing on Gauntlet Hair that hasn't been done better by more respectable second-order bands like Tonstartssbandht or Ganglians.

Abe Vigoda, HEALTH and No Age's noise-pop inform the best parts of this fine debut LP, rendering it a swirling headfuck of manic energy mixed with blissed-out melody.

There's much promise for an act like Gauntlet Hair to floor its contemporaries with time, but as it stands, their grimy, sewage system is in dire need of maintenance.

Gauntlet Hair lasts only nine songs. But they're all potential singles in their own right, all different.

Gauntlet Hair are surely a band to keep an eye on, and their first full-length is an exciting listen, but now that they've got that rhythm section thumping for us, let's get some clear choruses to shout along to.

There's nothing on Gauntlet Hair that rivals the pop-minded immediacy or the floor-stomping clamor of "I Was Thinking...," but it still manages to wade deeper into an abyss that few bands manage to come out of successfully.

They don't sustain the quality of songwriting throughout, but this is a promising start.

This horribly named duo's towering pop songs are buried so deep in reverberating juju that it's sometimes hard to follow them.

It's a mess of over-processed noise that sounds like one really long song. Incidentally, that's also what makes it such a layered, interesting listen.

Okay, so it won't be most people's cup of tea, but Gauntlet Hair is a brave and defiantly individual effort.