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Gripping the wheel of a Ford ranger sputtering down a rainy Houston exurban road at night. You squint, bleary eyed, through cracks in the windshield as oak trees wisp by on either side of the road. You pull into a dirt drive and park. Go through the yard to the house at the back of the lot. There was a party here but it is over now. Walk into the bedroom at the end of a black hall where they are waiting. They welcome you but say nothing, only stare at you through red, sullen eyes. You feel safe here. The room is lit by a 40” Vizio. On the screen, a youtube playlist of Italian black metal demos. You smell beer, weed and cigs. One of them is filing a ragged copy of Dunedin Double away. You smell sweat and burnt ammonia. One of them is playing Sauce Walka on his phone and is asleep. There is another smell in the room but you don’t know what it is. Another one of them has a tray in their lap, manipulating the flowers and powders on it with a manner of nihilistic accouterments. The rest of them stare longingly and peacefully into the tray. You can still smell it thick in the air. One of them searches youtube for Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker singing together. What the fuck is that smell? That’s what Chalk smells like.
Our take: I have zero background on the band Chalk, but the attentions of Shout Recordings and their Beat Sessions series is enough of an endorsement for me to check out a band I haven’t heard of. And, like the handful of other bands with whom I wasn’t familiar before they recorded a Beat Session, Chalk is great! The cover art for Chalk’s Beat Sessions tape reminds me of Institute’s Salt EP, and Chalk sounds like Institute in places too, particularly how the singer drags out their syllables in this halfway-in-the-gutter, drunken-sounding snarl. Tracks like the opener “New Mexico” and “My New Gun” take on dark post-punk influences like the Chameleons and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but by the time you get to “Wyoming,” the sound has widened to include acid-fried rockabilly of the Fall / Country Teasers persuasion. But while Chalk evokes the late 70s and early 80s, their music doesn’t sound like pastiche… it just sounds like honest, dense, heavy, and interesting music. As with the entire Beat Sessions series, the heavy and clear-sounding recording suits the band perfectly, too. Perhaps one of the lower-profile entries in the Beat Sessions series, but not one to skip.
Our take: I have zero background on the band Chalk, but the attentions of Shout Recordings and their Beat Sessions series is enough of an endorsement for me to check out a band I haven’t heard of. And, like the handful of other bands with whom I wasn’t familiar before they recorded a Beat Session, Chalk is great! The cover art for Chalk’s Beat Sessions tape reminds me of Institute’s Salt EP, and Chalk sounds like Institute in places too, particularly how the singer drags out their syllables in this halfway-in-the-gutter, drunken-sounding snarl. Tracks like the opener “New Mexico” and “My New Gun” take on dark post-punk influences like the Chameleons and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but by the time you get to “Wyoming,” the sound has widened to include acid-fried rockabilly of the Fall / Country Teasers persuasion. But while Chalk evokes the late 70s and early 80s, their music doesn’t sound like pastiche… it just sounds like honest, dense, heavy, and interesting music. As with the entire Beat Sessions series, the heavy and clear-sounding recording suits the band perfectly, too. Perhaps one of the lower-profile entries in the Beat Sessions series, but not one to skip.