Guiding Light's 'Fear On My Own Time' Is a Bilingual Post-Punk Debut With No Wasted Motion
Eight songs. Twenty-something minutes of them. Fear On My Own Time, out August 21st on Post Present Medium — the label run by Dean Spunt — is Guiding Light’s first full-length, and it arrives with the compression of a band that has already worked out what it does.
The Sonic Breakdown
The Production & Mix
The Low-End: The Austin four-piece is Elise Cook on vocals, John Morales on guitar, Rachel Kirk on bass and Charles Powell on drums, and the mix treats the rhythm section as the melodic engine rather than the floor. Kirk’s bass carries actual tunes; Powell plays around the downbeat as often as on it. When the guitar drops out — and it does, repeatedly — nothing sags, because the song was never being held up from the top.
The Spatial Dynamics: Morales’s guitar is recorded dry and close, all attack and no wash, which is what lets the record move as fast as it does. Bandcamp Daily’s punk column singled out the opener: “‘Shackled By Lust’ is an instant punk classic with its ultra-hooky, sparkling guitar lines and biting lyrics.” Sparkling is the right word — the tone is bright enough that the hooks land as hooks rather than as texture.
Standout Performance
Elise Cook, who sings in both German and English and treats the switch as a musical device, not a gimmick. “Egoismus,” “Haare,” “Die Zunge” and the closing “Liebe Im Kapitalistischen Reich” carry the German titles; the consonants do rhythmic work that the English songs get from the drums.
Why It’s Certified
Two independent outlets got there in the same month. Stereogum, writing about the band’s earlier self-titled EP, described “twitchy, hyperactive post-punk — the sound of virtuosic Television guitar moving at contorted Minutemen rhythms, topped off by Elise Cook’s blunt German bellows and English exclamations on sort of a Kleenex/Liliput wavelength.” The debut takes that description and gives it a proper recording. Start with “Shackled By Lust” and “Pothole.” Certified great.