Field Hymns dips into the re-issue game a little bit here in digging up an album by a fellow named Randall Taylor from back in 2006, which is (for lack of a better term) 8-bit butt-rock. Amazingly, I don’t exactly remember that being the hip style nine years ago… maybe I just missed the bandwagon. Or maybe I didn’t: Go No Go For Launch was a salvaged favorite of Dylan McConnell’s, received and rejected as a demo submitted to another label he was working for at the time, and essentially inspiring his uniformly ultra-badass cassette imprint in the process. So Jerk-Ass records missed out, and here we are a decade later with what I’m calling an “8-bit butt-rock tape.” And while I don’t totally blame you for raising an eye-brow at that and considering whether or not you’ll wanna get any closer to this thing, let me just stop you right there and quickly let you know that I love this shit. Listen to what’s there: Drum-machines, blippy synth-pop hooks, all underscored with chunky guitar riffs and thumps of bumpy bass. It’s just cheesy enough, just raw enough, just (un)real enough; just exactly enough. Tempos are at a tolerable “up,” — nothing so breakneck you might break your neck, which is something I find refreshing, since sending stuff like this into drill’n’drone territory could feel like a cop-out. It takes some restraint and real control to keep it keeled back like Taylor does on Re-Entry, and the melodies, bright and bouncy bounties they are, ring clean and true through it all. Sometimes you can feel that rushing, surging urge, a line getting slightly ahead of the backbeat, falling forward in hot anticipation of the next verse. I hear this as evidence of just how happy and excited this music is to be alive, to have been composed, and to be jogging laps around your ears. There’s a living pulse to the music that’s aerobic, exercise that doesn’t actually feel like exercise; yeah, it’s sweaty, but it’s also bleached with the feeling that you’re not gonna be hurting the next day. And as I struggle a bit myself with the pre-mid-life realizations that — Christ — I’m twenty pounds heavier at 30 than I was at 20, Go No Go For Launch is gonna be my daily inspiration to try to be exactly what it is: Fit, in-shape, and ready to fucking dominate each day ahead.
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