Song of the Day: TRAAMS - Costner

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today's song, featured on The Morning Show with John Richards, is "Costner" by TRAAMS off their 2015 album, Modern Dancing, on FatCat Records.

TRAAMS - Costner (MP3)

The continued existence of excellent garage rock in 2016 can be seen as much as a statement of the artist's world view as anything, a response to increasingly metronomic, mathematically precise "computer music" - the wall of sound, the imperfections, the shred are all testaments to the power of the human touch. But the sonic bombardment of a guy banging away on his guitar is just as often used as a crutch, a "let's just cover this with a thousand pounds of reverb and distortion so no one hears that one missed note or off-tempo snare hit." It takes confidence and precision to create the minimalist garage rock of Chichester, England band TRAAMS, a proper musical skill to cut back to the bare drums and bass that give the FatCat Records signees their dynamic sound that borders on pop but never quite crosses over.

"Costner" is a perfect example: for a record that sounds as big as this, there's relatively little going on: athletically persistent drums, microscopically tight bass, and the constant wail of feedback. The video accompanying it - a bird's eye performance of the thrashing track complete with moshing fans that knock the microphone onto the drummer's head - looks like the garage shows we know and love, but belies how tightly crafted the track is. The opener of their second album, Modern Dancing, "Costner" is both an elegant encapsulation of what the whole album sounds like, and also a testament to the production skills of The Hookworm's MJ, who reminds us that the beat-to-death phrase "this album sounds like a live album" can actually mean something. I'm going to respectfully disagree with Drowned In Sound's Aidan Reynolds when he says that this "isn't exactly a happy record" - this is a raucously joyous record, too celebratory to be moored down by any of the shoegaze-y sleepiness that's near ubiquitous in the lo-fi world these days. The skill that one can smell coming off "Costner" makes sense: relentless touring after their debut album, Grin, have given the band a 10,000 hours level tightness and precision that could seem antithetical to their garage roots, but thanks to some studio wizardry instead translate into that coveted aforementioned "live" sound across the whole record.

TRAAMS are currently touring the UK without any Stateside dates on the horizon, but check in with website and Facebook page for updates. For now, here's the official video for today's featured song: