Voxtrot

Voxtrot plays with hooks like a kid learning how to fish: fascinated, distracted, destined to hurt themselves, and destined to land some big ones. On the awkwardly-titled Mothers, Sisters, Daughters and Wives EP, they exhibit all of this all the time, skirting near-disasters by discarding perfectly-crafted musical ideas only to follow them with ones that are bigger and bolder. These guys throw away hooks that lesser bands would kill to craft a whole song around; the “a-ha!” moment that is perfectly embodied by the shift in Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” happens to me at least three times on Voxtrot’s title track alone. It’s an absurdly powerful song, and coupled with the simple, heartfelt lyrics (“Who says you have to lose a love to find one?”) made it one of my favorite songs this year.

The rest of the EP is equally powerful musically, which is absolutely necessary to recover the drama and bombast of the lyrics from meaningless oblivion. Peter’s review aptly points out that “Soft & Warm” has “a chorus that could easily devour itself” if it wasn’t saved from a huge guitar riff and bouncing bass line. This assertion is equally true for virtually all of the choruses on the record; feeling them teetering on the brink of disaster but never plunging in is what makes this record such damn fun to listen to.