There are already a handful of Connecticut releases that are among my top favorites so far this year -- Dead Uncles "Stock Characters", the Ferocious Fucking Teeth LP, the M-13 7", the Estrogen Highs LP, the One Hundred Year Ocean tape, and I'm probably forgetting some others -- and the Gentle Stunts album, "Life-Size Deadbeats", is possibly my favorite one out of the whole bunch. I don't think anyone's pressed it up yet, so it exists only as a free Bandcamp download right now, which is good enough at this point I guess. This album takes all kinds of different directions, with a few tracks being a lot quieter and a lot more mersh than others, but the songs are designed well enough so that this doesn't come off like some sort of half-finished sketchbook, although there's still plenty of potholes and rough edges to be found (which I like). There's killer hooks all over this thing, with the really standout stuff moving along as really neat distort-o pop, recalling the likes of Illya Kuryahkin, Orange Cake Mix, Tobin Sprout, and so forth. I don't know how many of you remember Werewolf Police, but Gentle Stunts' Cal McNamara was the guy who joined Werewolf Police on second guitar, shortly before they sorta faded into a very low level of activity... not as if that's any big selling point, just throwing that out there as proof of how detailed and complete my writing skills are.
The Gentle Stunts, "Don't You Ever"
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