4 out of 5

Label: Secretly Canadian

Producer: Daniel Burton?  Or Ativin.  Either way.

The Allmusic blurb on this calls Ativin “scary noise-rock,” and while I’d drop the ‘noise,’ I was also imagining the band scoring some kind of horror flick, so scary rock fits perfectly.  Along with the sterile cover art of their releases, there’s a generally haunting vibe behind the band – sound-wise this equates to clearly plucked or strummed guitar and bass and plodding (like footsteps) drums, all captured with just the right quality of reverb to keep them forefront in the production but slightly washed out and echoing, listening to it in a cave.  Every now and then something will stutter off-beat – your heart flutters – and then it settles back to normal.  On some tracks, Ativin takes a page from A Minor Forest, and will just freak out with distortion and suddenly clanging percussion for precious seconds, before disappearing into the next song.  The lack of predictability of this kind of finish (it’s not every track) makes their albums incredibly rewarding listens.

‘Modern Gang Reader’ is a perfect song and a perfect example of this.  It follows the method I describe above, but like a lot of things from the early Ativin era, it sounds the same and yet has its own unique groove.  The band sticks to its template, but – here I’ll reference another group, to prove I listen to musics – like Polar Goldie Cats, though every song, on some level, is similar, it’s more an acknowledgment of the same core birthing all of these different variations, as though Ativin’s daddy is one spooky chord progression and from it evolved a few albums worth of songs.

‘Larkin’ shows the other side of Ativin, with more upbeat playing and palatable tuning, starting with a more sparkling sound that nonetheless builds and picks up into discord, but as a B-side it doesn’t carry enough weight and might’ve worked better in an album cont- there’s enough room on the 7″ for another track that would’ve rounded it out.