Axis: Sova

On round three from Brett Sova’s Axis: Sova, the band is as whistle clean as they’ve ever been – all shined and shaved and in their Sunday best bolo ties for a dive bar date that’s greased with a half-gallon of snake oil charm. Like Purling Hiss before them, they embrace a classic rock deck shuffle and dip their freak card cadavers in swagger with a renewed gusto. The band has crawled steadily out of the Cretaceous with each new installment, blossoming from Brett and a cracked Casio spitting popcorn under his fuzztone freakouts to a two-piece batter-dipped in half-stack blowback, like an acid bath for the ol’ grey matter. This time, though, they’ve bumped to a trio, with Tim Kaiser returning and Jeremy Freise of Cave filling out the full band backup and its definitely given the band a renewed license to play havoc with the style guide.

There’s less focus on the fuzz n’ freak this time around, instead digging into a kind of new wave lacquered psych boogie that’s hard to place a finger on. On tracks like “Crystal Predictor” Sova’s balancing radio ready hooks with the sleaze-squeezed warble that fought its way through DEVO and The Units. Quick-cut to “Stale Green” and they’re cranking fog machines with the Deep Purple road crew. By the closer, Brett’s crooning to the girl in the front row and looking to transcend his bad boy image with a tender touch of ennui and a dash of road wear. It’s a nice look on them and an interesting juxtaposition of genres that fits well together. The AV antics of New Wave’s tin hat art freaks share a lot in common with the psych burnouts carving pot leaves into the back row of the class and this might just be the definitive dissertation on the hypothesis. The fuzzbomb jitters of Shampoo You ferret out a meet-cute of ostracized longhairs from all sides of the spectrum.

I’ll always stand on the side of dirtbag psych, and the album ticks a lot of boxes around here, though I’d wager that the band could push this aesthetic even further. Maybe they do in the live setting. It’s got room to get greasier, twitchier and more over the top. When invoking the spirit of spandex hip flex and/or jumpsuit mind flay its best to forget all sense of decorum. Be that as it may, Shampoo You has a lot to offer and its great to see a band not rutting into the sound they found a few years back. The record feels like a step forward, as if to say “this is not my final form,” but the mutation’s interesting all the same.

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