Hide and Shine | Soft Machines
(Portable Black Hole Records)
One of the last releases mixed by the late Steve Albini, debut double album Soft Machines from Kingston-based band Hide and Shine is a volatile powder keg of overdriven power trio music. Laden with a punk attitude, the music is nonetheless spiritually inclined. Maybe it’s because of founding guitarist and singer-songwriter Chris Kelly’s interest in the I Ching, or his trust in the subconscious in songwriting, but the music, apart from being grungy as a graffitied rock club bathroom, is interstellar in its lyrics, like when “Here There and Every Nowhere” takes the listener out of this world with the words “born outside of time and space I never thought I’d find a place with drifters of a quantum plain.” The second track, “You and Yesterday,” gives the band a moodiness, full of gravely strumming and snaking guitar riffs. Other standout tunes include “Mindless Apparition,” which sounds like a song that will go big.
This article appears in November 2024.
