After much anticipation, Chicago indie rock outfit SAYERS released their debut full length album, Horror Stories, this past April.
The album wastes no time kicking into gear. It starts strong with “The Arsonist” and flows right into “Get Naked“–which premiered on Midwest Action in the Spring. This one-two punch of radio-ready hits is a premonition of great things to come for the rest of the album.
“Push:Pull:Cave:Control” might be one of my favorite tracks on the album. It’s a swanky tune with wild guitar work. Though it feels slower at parts, it keeps the album on pace before shifting gears back to the more upbeat jams. It’s the longest track on the album, clocking in at about seven-and-a-half minutes, and it kept my head bobbing along the whole time. It ends as a swirling storm of instrumentation, with a ripping guitar solo shining through.
The closing track, “Nothing New,” is a funky, jangly standout. It flows from high-energy dance rock to a melodic ballad-driven bridge and back to straight indie rock. The analytical side of my brain is telling me that genre-melding shouldn’t work, but SAYERS has woven a track from the finest threads where all the disparate elements come together into a really incredible final product–and it very much works.
Horror Stories is an energetic album, dripping in indie rock goodness with kick ass violin accents that give it just a slight folky touch that I love. The vocals are grandiose and the melodies are memorable as the tracks seamlessly flow in and out of each other. It’s truly an album full of ear worms; it’s just up to you to decide what’s going to get stuck in your head.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: SAYERS is a damn fine indie rock band, and this is a damn fine indie rock album.
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