There’ a stratospheric quality to Empty Rooms’ latest EP, Laguna. It’d make the perfect soundtrack to a flying montage. Laguna soars from the outset and hangs suspended in space for its entire duration. Two years in the making, the San Francisco quartet have overcome a number of hurdles – a severe injury to their bass playing frontman Andy Beyes and engineer Jeff Ehrenberg’ unannounced 3 month sojourn to India – to release a brief, four-track EP that combines post-rock ethereality, shadowy post-punk brooding and the late-80s raggedness of early grunge proponents like The Jesus and Mary Chain and Sonic Youth.
The vocals are never the focal point on Laguna. They’re just another instrument, coated in a heavy fog of reverb, similar to the New Wave vocal production employed by Bernard Sumner on those early New Order albums. Beyes’ lyrics are almost impenetrable as they drift into the back-draft of his bandmates’ instruments. “All’ Well’ is the amorphous opening number: no instrument seems to want to define itself. The atmospheric guitar work lies somewhere between The Edge and the post-rock style of Takaakira Goto or Munaf Rayani. Beyes’ top-heavy bass tone apes that of The Cure’ Simon Gallup. “Off With His Head’ is less of a maelstrom, with every instrument given a more definite position in space.
Empty Rooms indulge in a fulfilling instrumental, “Twenty’, that confidently displays the band’ ability to create tension and mood in their music. Laguna is rounded off by the glacial Joy Division sound of “We’ve Been Waiting For You’, which seems like the perfect ending point, as though the lessons of the journey have been corralled into this final song. Its explosive ending is a fitting way to be brought back down to Earth.
Dom Alessio
