This impeccable mod-rock trio oozes gothic-cloaked high drama cut with fuzz-bang firepower and a strategic twist of pop smarts. Bandleader Carson Barker draws carefully from each element, instilling Schisms’ first full-length with a cinematic worldview that avoids the trap of pastiche. High desert meets old country on “Bibles and Torahs” as Barker bellows jet-black invective in the direction of divide-and-conquer religion. The epic herky-jerk of “Private Eye” beckons Interpol’s Gotham at the millennial cusp. Fueled by a swirling, horror movie organ patch, “Rapture Rupture” whips about like a carnival ride, and deliciously tense highway song “No One Has to Know” employs a Cars-style synth riff as designated earworm. Its animated video drives home the degree to which this Moon is full.
This article appears in December 22 • 2017.
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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.
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