Earlier this year, I wrote a bit about the Portland, OR-based indie rock quintet King Who, and as you may recall, the band which is comprised of Michael Young, Ryan Hayes, Ryan Cross, Glen Scheidt and Travis Girton released their Hutch Harris-produced sophomore album Giant Eye through Self Group back in August. The album found the band expanding upon their sound with the increasing incorporation of New Wave, post-punk and dream pop while retaining the heavy bass of their full-length debut Us Lights.
The album’s first single, the slow-burning “Ice Cream” found the band drawing from shoegaze and dream pop as the song was centered around shimmering guitar chords, a propulsive rhythm section, a soaring hook and Micheal Young’s plaintive falsetto, sounding though as it were recorded during the era of 120 Minutes-era alt rock. “Crying Shame,” Giant Eye’s second single was arguably, the most New Wave/post-punk-inspired song on the album, recalling Heaven Up Here-era Echo and the Bunnymen, Evil Heat-era Primal Scream and Luminous-era The Horrors, thanks to one of the funkiest rock bass lines I’ve heard this year.
The Portland-based indie quintet close out 2018 with “Kill Me,” a slow-burning shoegazer track centered around shimmering guitar chords, twinkling keys, and dirge-like drumming — and while continuing along in a similar vein as its predecessors, it may arguably be the most lysergic and hallucinogenic song off the album.
The recently released video by ARKWAGON employs the use of freeze frame photography to a trippy effect.
