SPEED STICK - Volume One LP (colour vinyl)

Includes d/l code.

Limited edition clear vinyl.

Speed Stick has been hailed as something of a supergroup, but it’s more than just that. The band’s core consists of members of Polvo, The Paul Swest, Bat Fangs, and The Love Language, but this debut album also boasts appearances by other North Carolina indie luminaries including Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan and The Breeders’ Kelley Deal. It is, essentially, a veritable Megazord of North Carolina’s important and influential indie rock scene.

The results are wildly incongruent, as you might expect. It all begins with the proto-post-punk/Krautrock of opener “Protect Your Magic,” which contains within its four and a half minutes enough ideas for a career’s worth of tunes, and which eventually becomes a miasma of avant-garde noise that Captain Beefheart might be proud of. There are more conventional rock/indie/punk vibes to “Knots” and “Pretty Sure,” while “Twin Collision” is a time machine back to 1960s LSD-inspired pop. And just to shake things up even more, there’s the straight-up hip-hop of “Lurk on Me”.