When I first went to Accordion Crimes’ Bandcamp page, I saw that they tagged themselves as post-rock and thought, “Dang. There are tons of instrumental post-rock bands.” Turns out, they aren’t instrumental! They also aren’t really what I normally think of as post-rock at all, which is very good. They’re name is from an E. Annie Proulx novel that doesn’t have anything to do with rock music.
Their most recent album, “Songs To Drive Wives Away”, is more complicated than their minimalist tag, more organized than their noise rock tag, and not really post-rock either.
I really love this vocal style. He’s usually chanting and yelling repeated phrases over nervously aggressive instrumentation. “Stray” might be my favorite of the seven songs on “Songs To Drive Wives Away” because of the casual but serious vocals. That drum beat is really sick too.
They say they’re interested in DIY Venues, aluminum neck guitars, recording techniques, homemade donuts, African Tape Group, NPR, and slaying zombies. That’s all either totally respectable or totally practical. Everyone needs to be way more serious about learning techniques for slaying zombies. Also, homemade donuts are probably delicious. I’d like to bring these guys to The South though and compare them to some of our delicious treats.
“Ouray” is a really great song too. It’s so dynamic! Those verses are so quiet. I’d like to see the waveform for that song. Most people don’t utilize dynamics like this enough. Well done, Accordion Crimes. If I were in Denver, I’d totally see you play.
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