Weed don't have a Facebook page and they've only got 28 followers on Spotify. They play relatively inexpensive shows, and they never have a guest list. Weed may be just some small Vancouver, Canada band with nothing to lose, but with their new album, Running Back, they are bringing relevancy back to the indie alternative vein. And people are starting to notice.
Running Back succeeds in a lot of unconventional ways, but most of all in its ability to evoke nostalgia. The album cover is like the badly Xeroxed collages that served as your text book cover in high school; even their band name sounds more like the school talent show winners than potential peers of bands like Joyce Manor.
From the album's first lyric, “I don’t wanna feel like this anymore” on “Muscles,” singer-guitarist Will Anderson's themes of disappointment and friendlessness speak to those days you wasted away in your room when you were fifteen. Running Back certainly isn't the result of immaturity, but it isn't afraid to be vulnerable.
Weed have melded together elements of shoegaze, garage rock and Pacific Northwest indie to create an undeniably West Coast sound. The combination of Anderson's out-of-focus vocals and buzzing, saturated guitar hooks makes the album simultaneously Seattle-rain ready and the perfect California-summer soundtrack. This is the kind of album that you’d expect to hear floating out of a Portland record shop or swelling post-dialogue to create dramatic romantic tension between Ryan and Marissa in season one of The O.C.
In a time when every possible iteration of guitar music has been recorded, released and run into the ground, it takes something exceptional to make an impression. Weed are the exception. And with cred like this, they won’t be underdogs for long.
The album is out via Lefse Records.
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