Formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 2012, Microwave are definitely a band who operate on their own frequency. Seemingly impervious to fads and trends, the band have developed a sound that exists on some kind of elevated strata. Eclectic and engaging, their fourth album has been five years in the making, but Let’s Start Degeneracy certainly isn’t overcooked and serves up a smorgasbord of tracks that truly know no boundaries.
The wide array of influences the band have drawn upon for this album is mind blowing (quite literally) and everything from pop to R&B have been swirled together in a psychedelic soup. It means that aptly-titled opener ‘Portals’ seems to emanate from another dimension; it’s a wormhole into another world and it’s ethereal nature slowly plants roots into your soul. It’s the type of song that ingratiates itself into your physiology and becomes part of the listener’s DNA. Opening like a lotus flower, it’s a song that gradually, almost imperceptibly, takes on new form until it slowly hugs the listener like a warm blanket, or a shot of novocaine.
Aided by a thick, chocolatey production, Let’s Start Degeneracy is a luxurious river of silk that flows towards an unknown destination. It means that in whatever guise the band appear, the baroque ‘Ferrari’ or the alternate rock of ‘Circle The Drain’, the album slots together very well. While it is perfectly feasible to dip in and out, it’s advisable to set aside half an hour to experience this album in full to fully appreciate its ebb and flow, it’s a record that breathes and has its own heartbeat.
Much of Let’s Start Degeneracy draws upon the band members experiences with certain “substances”, and as is so often the case with such experimentation, the result is an album that throws off negative emotions like guilt and shame, and the album operates as such. There’s a freedom to tracks ‘LSD’ and ‘Strangers’ which break the shackles of the past and gives the album a kind of modernity, and while the band haven’t torn up their roots, it sounds as if they’re more intent on exploring the future than rehashing the past, and as final track ‘Huperzine’ fades into the ether, you feel that this is just the beginning.
- Let’s Start Degeneracy is released via Pure Noise Records on 26th April 2024.
Track List:
- Portals
- Ferrari
- Circling The Drain
- Bored Of Being Sad
- Straw Hat
- LSD
- Omni
- Strangers
- Concertito
- Huperzine
