words by Michael Scott

8/11

Total Slacker is a band with a nineties garage-rock feel and heavy doses of  psychedelic madness running thick through its veins. They are a band freshly picked by a small label out London called Marshall Tellar Records as their sounds have been revolutionizing our heady new punk here in Brooklyn. Some highbrows would call it Shitgaze (New Yorker Magazine) – their lo-fi sound is like an insanely laid back Link Wray, with weird, floating vocals. They consist of Emily Oppenheimer on bass and vocals, Tucker Rountree on guitar and vocals and Alicia Silverstone on drums. With spaced out, sometimes filtered vocals, expansive yet raw guitar playing and commanding drums, every song of theirs is insanely repeatable.

One of their greatest songs right now is “Psychic Mesa.” It starts off completely jarring and almost a little terrifying and then opens up into this beautiful whirling dervish of a song. I wish I could find the lyrics online because they sound amazing but are suspiciously absent and lost in the psychedelic goodness. Another great they have online would have to be “Crystal Necklace,” a howling romp with the same sort of jerky, arresting guitar playing that got me interested in these guys’ sound to begin with. And the lyrics are rather tantalizing, really dreamed out and simplistic, downright hilarious at times yet almost screamed out in the chorus to the point where you can’t help but get caught up in them. Apparently the single, released last year, reached #36 on the Pitchfork 2010 reader’s poll.

Catch Total Slacker on April 20 (yeah, that’s right, 4/20) playing with DOM at the Bowery Ballroom. Should be a night to remember/forget.