The lid on this Harper’s Jar is tight, real tight – just like the band’s musicianship.
Harper’s Jar has a debut album coming out this year, April 10th to be exact, and for now, we’ve been graced with two tracks: Dandy Golden Blue and Home Is A Roach Hotel. In short, they’re a couple of indie/rock treats.
Dandy Golden Blue is the most energetic of the two and pulses forward with a straight hard rock beat accompanied by harsh down strums on the guitar. The tipsy vocals elevate the track to essentially create a punk song, yet the quiet guitars during the verses add – what can only be described as – that “Harper’s Jar” touch where we’re being blasted with a beautiful mixture of the harsh and the harmonious all at the same time. It’s around the three-quarter mark that we’re gifted with an absolute headbanger of a moment brought to you by a bullying bass sound. I know it’s the EP we’re concerned about here, but it’s worth checking the live performance of this single for that brilliant ending. Wait for it:
Home Is A Roach Hotel starts with an ever so slightly off-kilter choppy drum beat hobbling about the place like a drunken uncle trying to operate a hands-free Segway device at Christmas. Not quite knowing where the beat will fall due to a tricksy display of musical creativity, the guitar soon saves face with its shiny chord sequence cementing that sweet-melancholic vibe, introducing us to roughly four minutes of a shoegazey wonder.
There’s something to be said about the band’s synergy on Home Is A Roach Hotel with a clear cut direction on the track’s identity with conscious build-ups, breaks and instrument drop-outs melding together to create something truly meaningful. There’s only the three of them, yet there’s a palpable dynamism that demands your attention.
“Love is a roach motel” is a fantastic line too that is likely to give the English undergrads out there a full-on shake-spear with its inferred meaning as it works as a solid metaphor for love being a dirty and transient place, yet almost comfortable – a clever, yet punk take on the whole love song vibe, and this comes across as exciting and refreshing. Dare I also add that some of these lines chirped on this track are reminiscent of Billy Corgan in his prime.
I can’t fault either of these songs and don’t have any negative words towards them. One can only hope that the album features a diverse range of tracks as (in my opinion) some up and coming bands – with their debut album especially – get stuck in creating a unique sound rather than focusing on song diversity, so here’s hoping Harper’s Jar surprises us with Thank You Ancestor Finger (the album title, I know, wtf!).
Here are the tracks: