Gnaw

Through the exhaustion, it persists. Gnaw’s glowing power-pop draws deep from a tired tension: a perpetually shifting negotiation between ‘90s alt-rock romanticism, fuzzed out upon machine-gun drumming; pummeling riffs mangled through digital processing and noise; tales traversing lingering memory and motion, mesmerized by hypergaze-influenced joy rushes. Brandishing a heavy palette of power pop immediacy — equally indebted to indie rock contemporaries like Momma and Slow Pulp and ‘90s grit a la Hole and Smashing Pumpkins — the EP’s four serrated songs thrill through life’s pushes and pulls. 

On their debut EP, Inside a Machine That’s Glistening, the three-piece draws from that weighty palette to weave four songs that glow amidst the grit. There’s a curious, yet never overbearing darkness to them: confessionals channeled through Daniel Lim’s serrated guitar work, dancing between Tara Tan’s cautious, whispery vocals. Navigating a spectrum from sheer wonder (“Star”) to fear (“Gash”) and fatigue (“This Is My Life”), Tan’s personal stories shift from dreamy to dramatic. Meanwhile, drummer Zakhran Khan’s fine-tuned rhythms rip into these sincere questions, at times accelerating to torrents of catharsis, while at others simply adding to moments triumphant.