Deeper‘s Shiraz Bhatti, Nic Gohl, and Drew McBride take a thoughtful and direct approach with their songwriting, yielding spry melodies and inventive structures. It’s a clever combination of jagged post-punk and refined indie rock. A tightly wound rhythm section teeters on the edge, but is anchored by intricate guitar interplay and saturated with an enigmatic spirit. Their first album, 2018’s Deeper channeled the anxiety of change in everyday life and navigating the unhinged political atmosphere. Run takes a more existential approach, reaching down past the emotion and staring back at the inner.
Backed by an astutely scientific cover of the John Maus rarity “Bennington”, Deeper sheds the searching bottled up in previous material, carving out an ambit distinctly their own. Brisk, pointed and efficient, and no note wasted, Run b/w Bennington, a new 7 Inch out in October 2019, sets the stage for the Chicago trio’s sophomore LP.
(Photo Credit: Brendan Carroll)
The record that really jumped out to us this year that we’ve been spinning a ton is Yves Tumor’s Heaven To A Tortured Mind. I just really, really loved it. All the singles were coming out while we were on tour still, before everything got canceled, so it was kind of one of those albums we got to live with in the van — or the singles, at least. [The full album] dropped about two weeks before we got home, and I remember that was the one thing that was kind of a saving grace. Like, “OK, at least a really good album came out this year.” I’ve been a huge fan of them since their last record came out, Safe In The Hands of Love. That record was so amazing to me, and following it up with this…
I feel like we didn’t really like the singles as much, or we didn’t really think that they fit. I just remember hearing the full album together, and it was like everything I thought of it completely changed. You don’t really get that with a lot of music today, a release as a full piece of art. I feel like this record in particular as a whole is something that is in its own category.
What’s really interesting between the first record and the second — the first one is more electronic and feels darker, and the new record has more live instrumentation. It feels kind of jagged and glammy in a really cool way. It kind of reminds me of Basquiat’s eccentric, jagged paintings.
It’s a really cool follow up to a kind of dark and brooding record. Whatever Prince is doing in heaven or hell, wherever the fuck he is — that kind of mentality comes out in this record for me. He definitely embodies it in his music, with the kind of — for lack of a better term — cock rock guitar riffs. It’s intentionally overmasculine, while Yves Tumor himself is not masculine, really, at all. I think that’s a really interesting way to use those elements, of really riffy, beefy guitar lines.
The album embodies the lost year of 2020 a bit. Which is kind of their vibe — the record title is a perfect indication. Heaven To A Tortured Mind: I feel like a lot of us kind of feel like that right now. It feels like an escape from this year. When I listen to it, I feel kind of whisked away to this other place.
As far as movies went, I feel like the Sonic The Hedgehog movie was a wonderful masterpiece. We were on tour with Twin Peaks in Dublin, Ireland, and then we came back home and everything shut down.
Yves Tumor’s Heaven To A Tortured Mind is out now, as well as Deeper’s Auto-Pain.
As told to Annie Fell.
