When Rochester's Joywave asks "how do you feel?," they really want to know. Using an interactive online concept where listeners can hashtag both the band name and song title to express in words what the song made them see, the band created an evolving stream of images to go with the four song EP that dropped yesterday. "Happy visualizing" is how the band puts it, and when you combine the visual and the audio, it makes for a listening experience that forces you to focus on the music, instead of the things you do when you should be actively listening to an album.
Streaming an album online usually means that the album is one of 20 open tabs you're kinda, sorta focused on while you update your Twitter bio and lurk your ex on Instagram and finally get around to paying that parking ticket you got six weeks ago, but this one forces the music into the foreground and it makes for a fresh listening and viewing experience. The album is only a day old, and already there are flashing images and words of the visions it evokes on the internet. To quote Jay and Ye, that shit cray.
The album, for all its brevity, is bountiful with sound. The first single, "In Clover," was released earlier this month and is the club/getting ready to go to the club jam you didn't know you needed in your life until it was there. It's electronica in the best way possible: slinky, synthy, and just a little bit arrogant, and while it gives "Tongues," a killer KOPPS-featured track some serious competition for best dance song, it's the crashing, smashing drumbeats that "Tongues" opens with that make it the winning song. It's one of those rare songs where you know there are words, but it doesn't matter what they are because you're too busy stomping the yard to even hear them. Shamelessly dancing in my car is a daily activity, and this song is my new favorite one to get down to on the commute to work.
Overall, the Cultco released album is a banger. Literally. SO many drums. Like, layers and layers of drums and bass and cymbals and I know I've said this about Joywave albums before, but their music is the exact soundtrack Patrick Bateman would play to kill an unsuspecting hooker in a ritzy Manhattan apartment. It's that 80s electropop vibe that keeps me wanting more from these guys, who, by the way, are currently holding it down at SXSW. You can stream the entire How Do You Feel EP below.
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