2 out of 5

Label: Merkin Records

Produced by: Eli Janney and Edsel

Normally I’d save the notes for after the review, but up front: do yourself a favor and listen to the digital remaster of this album. All of the Edsel remasters improve on the originals to my ears, but this album – their debut – benefits the most, as it places this variant of their sound closer to the guitar-fronted pop of followups. There’s probably a world where I review the remaster separately, but I think the review still stands – my ears just had to fight a bit more to get into the sound, which admittedly does take it down a notch.

Edsel floated around the DC hardcore punk scene, orbiting the likes of Soul Side, and other early Dischorders, but perhaps more notable as one of those “…and they used to be in”-type bands. I’d see them thanked; I’d see flyers of them playing with others with whom I was more familiar; and very likely if I was actively cool during their early 90s heydays, they would’ve been more on my radar. At the same time, having poked at their catalogue here and there, the group does fit into an opening act model, where their sound doesn’t necessarily latch on to any excessively strong element that hasn’t been done more notably by other bands in the scene. That said, every band has been someone’s opening act, just as every band is someone’s favorite; more just that Edsel perhaps works best if you discover them naturally, or if they were one of your early bands, or a group you saw live. Hunting them down because they worked with GVSB’s Eli Janney – as they did here – is maybe just setting oneself up with expectations.

…Of? I’m not really sure. That’s what’s most puzzling about Strange Loop: I really don’t know what sound the group was aiming for. Buried in Janney’s puzzlingly murky mix are some solid grooves, but Sohrab Habibion’s yearning vocals atop a very 90s, washed-out guitar sound and weightless drums and bass calls to mind, like U2, which is very far from DC hardcore in my mind. Here are there, you can hear the punk stirrings, as some riffs tear through and Nick Pellicciotto bangs out some heavy hits on the drums, but the vibe is otherwise kind of a mush of undefined attributes, given further vagueness via Habibion’s rhymey poetry. As with the songs themselves, these lyrics occasionally produce some heightened moments – a particularly strong image – but more often feel like filler, singing because someone had to.

Multiple passes on the album help to hear more and more of what’s buried in the mix, and there are some truly strong tracks there – the opener; rotary batter – that absolutely vibe with the crews with which Edsel was paling around back in the day. But the recording here doesn’t bring that to bear, in addition to a wider percentage of the tracks not making a strong case for the group having a completely identifiable sound.