MOONRATS @ echo

Wilderness || Listen || Watch

For a band named Wilderness, the Baltimore quartet make dissonant art-rock that’s distinctly urban, full of throat in a way that develops when you’re shouting to be heard in cities that never break or breathe. They specialize in a kind of crescendo minimalism: Through two albums of often shapeless cacophony (featuring thick, intertwined guitars and tom-and-kick drumming), they’ve crafted long-form songs that, though patient and deep-lunged, rely on the anthemic bursts to which they lead. At the fore but not the center, then, there’s lead singer James Johnson, whose slurred vocal style’s been compared to figures like John Lydon and David Byrne. But within such minor tempests, he’s not a frontman per se: His warbling disconnects from the words issued and becomes just another instrument, his lyrics broken down into simple repeated cries and chants that rise above the band’s shapely chaos, a further element of their dim but aspirant atmospheres. – Village Voice

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San Serac || Listen
Moonrats