PREMIERE | The Sour Notes, "Gold" / "Best"
The melody, majesty and might of The Sour Notes’ (from left) — Amarah Ulghani, Jeremy Harrell & Jared Boulanger; press photo courtesy of the band.
In the heavily populated musical landscape of Austin TX, the importance and proliferation of The Sour Notes cannot be overstated. From their offshoot Memory Keepers and their overall persistence and proliferation over the years; the trio of Jared Boulanger, Amarah Ulghani and Jeremy Harrell deliver generous doses of ample inspiration of unrelenting electric ore. A band that began in the oughts and gifted us with full length works like Received in Bitterness, It’s Not Gonna Be Pretty, Last Looks, Do What May, Darkest Sour, This Is Not Our Music and countless singles and EPs — our devout denizens dedicated to the DIY craft present a debut listen to their upcoming Gold / Best 7” that serves as a precursor to an upcoming album that reiterates the importance of one of the most important and pertinent southwest acts.
“Gold” tackles the life/work/play/create balance systems of give and take struggles. Employing a post-punk method with a heavy degree of grunge menace; The Sour Notes pick up the mantle from where the dearly departed Pete Shelley left off and send up a song about the frustrations, desires, minutiae, efforts, exhaustion and exaltations that occur within the zeitgeist of our efforts as creators and laborers. Boulanger, Ulghani and Harrell stir up a mix that underscores the personal storm of sweat, tears, pain, fatigue, doubt and the existential fears that reverberate beneath the surface that pertain to the grind of day jobs, the second guessing of the self and the fervent focuses of aesthetic curation that arrive rapid fire in a manner of all-too-familiar levels of human realness. The agony and ecstasy of “Gold” is a brutalist exhibition of those unpaved pathways and laboriously blazed trails that the uninitiated pigeonhole in understatements of the roads less traveled.
“Best” is melancholic power pop bliss. The specter of Alex Chilton can even be heard in the delivery and the arrangement of the incredible and heartbreaking track. The reiterations of go off and live your best life and you do you illustrate a breakup in candid conversational lyrics that are blended in earnest guitars and emotion inducing synths. The song shines a light on a pair that looks happy on the surface, whereas everything is falling apart beneath the facade and smiling veneer of duplicitous contentment. Boulanger addresses the processes and aspects of the hurt and difficulty of being in a loveless bind, whilst accepting the difficult surrender of letting go when something was never meant to be to begin with. The Sour Notes orchestrate the heart-wrought bon voyage of “Best” as a bittersweet symphony tailored toward the hopes of discovering that special and kindred connection while putting the pain of the past away to rest.
Jared Boulanger of The Sour Notes provided the following insights on the new singles:
This is the third pair of songs from our next album that we’re releasing as 7 inch singles every couple months instead of all at once. Putting out music this way has given us the opportunity to play more new songs live and at a faster rate than ever before. We enjoy staying busy and not getting overwhelmed by lengthy tasks!
My friend Michael described Gold/Best as a headbanger backed by a tearjerker. I feel like working on a small batch of songs puts more focus on making each song stand out more individually. That hopefully leads to an album full of tracks that are all killer, no filler so to speak.
“Gold” is definitely one of our heavier tracks of late and has an unusual rhythm to the vocal melody. It’s almost a rap at times. The song is kind of a war song about productivity, band life and having no choice but to just hang in there and fight...
I agree with Michael, “Best” is beautifully tragic. We opted for a string synth to carry the song and other than that, it’s just a rhythm guitar and drums. So simple and direct. We also recorded this track in a mi-century church in my neighborhood, so it’s got a big, roomy sound!
The Sour Notes’ new Gold/Best 7” arrives December 28.
Cover art for Gold/Best.