Since 2016, Leafblower’s patented brand of psych-tinged post-rock has whiplashed crowds of bobbing heads and pumping fists. The band released a demo, a live set, a single—but all the while, their first full-length has been simmering to a boil, now ready to sear.
Burn Cruise is a sound that only a steady diet of metal and hardcore, even while members played in post-punk (New Lungs, The Fucking Party), indie (Little Brazil), and old-school reinvented country (Lightning Stills), can meld. The opener, “Long Night,” haunts, creeps, then gallops into the howling dual guitars of Dan Maxwell and Clark Jahn, while the outro track “Stoopin’” is a haunted shiver of banjo, piano, and theremin soaked in the aural equivalent to sepia. In between, “Namaste” unleashes an onslaught out of the gate, as bassist Craig Fort gutturally punctuates vocalist Maxwell’s plaintive venom. On the title track, sludge shifts to discordant-edged stadium anthem, while the melodic post-punk of “Unsatisfied” twists into prog-rock harmony before the song pummels with pure metal. The unrelenting beat of “Ghosts” builds, guitars wailing, and Tab Tworek’s drums turn frenetic, a pulse-racing metronome. Add to all that: Tim.
Imagine a dimly lit dive bar, Leafblower gearing up to play. Before the strike of the first chord, before the pulse of a drum, an old man—stringy hair and beard—hovers in the billowing fog of a smoke machine. On close inspection, his eyes are empty. His pale face flaps loosely, as if skinned and put back. His body is stuffed. Is he a mascot, like Dio’s Murray or Iron Maiden’s Eddie? Is he symbolic? Is he a manifestation of the collective consciousness? An embodiment of the music? He is Tim.
Leafblower’s the band and Tim’s the mascot. A master leaf blower, blowing fog all over your good times, with leafblower the band as the soundtrack: four dudes in jumpsuit uniforms. Think Kraftwerk meets yard work, plus Busch Light, with noise guitars instead of synths. It’s dissonant stuff, reverb fed through tin cans and amplified.
Take the roughest looking dudes in your neighborhood (shovel man from home alone but drunker, with unlimited gasoline). And there’s four of them. Those poor kids inadvertently seeing leafblower descend into their practice space are going to need major psychiatric work to undo their deep-seated fears of all things lawn associated. And that’s without even hearing the music.
Leafblower is loud. It is an experience. Listening to them is like holding an industrial leaf blower, 64cc and gas powered. The ones that strap to your back. Pulling that starting rope, jumpsuit on. Unleashing fury. Fuck you, leaf-litter. You got that beast cranking and everyone walking by crosses to the other side of the street. That is leafblower. – Dr. Paul Hansen
Recorded and mixed by Ian Aeillo at Make Believe Studios and mastered by Carl Saff, Burn Cruise is Leafblower’s inimitable voice at full throat.
