Cemetery Highrise Slum
is the third LP from downcast '90s revivalists
Creepoid
. Since forming in 2010, the Philadelphia indie quartet has honed its textural pastiche of spacy noise rock, grunge, and shoegaze over the course of two EPs and two full-lengths. Fronted by singer/guitarist
Sean Miller
, who occasionally splits vocal duties with bassist
Anna Troxell
,
work in a disconsolate haze of tweaked guitar tones nested over slow-burning rhythms that rarely bust out of low gear. To make
, the band headed down to Savannah, Georgia to work with producer
Peter Mavrogeorgis
(
Grinderman
the Vanity Set
) at his Dollhouse Studios. Sonically, the album's ambience falls somewhere between Georgia's slow-roasting humidity and their own city's underground grime. While much of what
does practically defines doldrums, they are not without their hooks. With his laconic
Billy Corgan-esque
snarl,
Miller
delivers appealingly disenchanted alt-rock with pop aspirations that are often hidden under arrangements that give the impression of being looser than they really are. Tracks like "American Smile" and "Dried Out," with their tone of slacker mockery, are abundant in the kind of nasty riffs and melodies that would have launched a thousand ships back in 1991. On the other side of the coin are their downtempo shoegaze tracks like "Fingernails" and "Shaking," which hit all the genre touchpoints (hazy atmosphere, heavily effected guitar tones, buried vocals, etc.), but feel a bit too textbook and lacking in definition. As a whole,
seem very indebted to a certain era (early-'90s alt-rock and its subgenres) and, like any band working in so specific a sound, they need to work twice as hard to infuse their own identity into the songs.
is a worthy effort with a highly crafted vibe, but
's personality only shines through some of the time. ~ Timothy Monger