4 out of 5

Label: Deathwish

Produced by: Jack Shirley

With the forced pause of Covid and a subsequent beat during which the band had to regain some recording motivation, my listen of single ‘Dallas’ off of Gouge Away’s third outing, Deep Sage… had me a bit bummed. The growth from snotty upstart punk screamers on , Dies to the more introspective hardcore of Burnt Sugar was incredibly exciting, but also came with some alarms learned from other bands’ progress: dreaded “maturity,” which also seems to come with a bevy of press praise, but when I listen to whichever big-step-forward album, it feels like awards bait; or like the bandmembers got jobs and kids and don’t want to be angry or whatever anymore. And I check out.

‘Dallas’ suggested all of that for Gouge Away, picking up on the grungier elements of Burnt Sugar and giving us a good and emotive track likely about a passed friend. It’s a good song. But it’s a song that I could trace to various female-led rockers from the 90s, albeit with modern production polish. I don’t mean to discredit the very sincere output of lyricist / singer Christina Michelle, just very shallowly say that I’ve heard similar songs before.

Then we’ll go ahead and release opener ‘Stuck in a Dream’ off the same album, and I get all the good giggles I got out of Gouge Away, all over again.

An absolutely unhinged punker, that cuts a solid line between Sugar’s rock and Dies thrash, and marries the soft spot of this album – Michelle’s words, which are not uninteresting, but kind of vaguely circle around half-hearted themes of discontent – to the track’s anthemic style. Indeed, to my ears, the best songs on Deep Sage (and there are several) are one the group is just kind of going for the throat, but with the more layered composition approach learned in the intervening years between their debut and now. This happens so frequently on the album that you can feel the energy that brought the group back into the studio, smartly captured live to tape by producer Jack Shirley. Dallas thus becomes a fitting coda to the disc, with a couple of other more linear rocks spread throughout, but punctuated with some damn angry guitar / vocal / percussion throttling that makes sure the record earns its place on the Deathwish roster.