Vaguess: Thanks//No Thanks 12"

Vinny Earley is the brain (floating in a jar) behind the LA based band Vaguess. You might have seen him around. He's pretty tall, kind of looks like a mix between Hulk Hogan and Bart Simpson and is probably standing in the corner of a house party flicking lit matches at the wall, and talking about how GG Allin wasn't even really that gross. In reality, Earley would more likely be seen surfing, skating, telling a hilarious fart joke, or ripping guitar or drums in one of a handful of heady bands in the LA scene like Diode, 2m8o, and Scam Likely. Vaguess, however, is Vinny's lifeblood. Since 2012, the band has released a dozen or so LPs and EPs, touring extensively with a rotating cast of Earley's close buds building a cult following. Vinny fearlessly traverses genres, seamlessly switching between glitchy synth punk, jangly art rock, and twangy cowpunk melded together with his singular approach to songwriting, production, and unique voice. On his latest release Thanks No Thanks, Vaguess joins forces with Under the Gun Records embarking on an odyssey of bigger and bolder production, infectious melody, and introspective songwriting propelled by dialed, head-bobbing rhythms. With Thanks No Thanks, the vibe of the music shifts in controlled bipolarity as the songs flow from snotty punk tune to heart-felt ballad to dancy Indie banger. The music on this record, however, is uniformly grounded by taut drumming, angular riffing, and tunneling synth arrangements. Earley's singing style pings from more spoken, punctuated post-punk vocals to ringing, belted choruses. The lyrics feel personal, like he's working through feelings of love lost, spiritual devastation, and deep conflict with society’s inequities explored through Earley's poetic, sardonic lens. These narratives careen through the album with the help of densely arranged instrumentation and engineering magic cooked up in Earley's own homespun studio. This album is best enjoyed with headphones as the music thoughtfully swirls in stereo sound. Vaguess delivers a diverse pallet of modern rock sounds as a uniform and cohesive piece of art. Thanks No Thanks has something for nearly everyone- eggheads and spikey cretins alike. And while Vinny may not look like The Hulkster or Bart Simpson or do any of that other stuff that was said initially, he more importantly continues to contribute his singular and exciting rock n roll vison to the punk zeitgeist with a new Vaguess Record.

Our take: Under the Gun Records (USA) and Erste Theke Tonträger (Germany) team up to bring us this new full-length from California’s Vaguess, and while both labels are associated with the egg punk thing, Vaguess doesn’t fit that mold. While Thanks//No Thanks touches a bunch of styles across its 10 tracks, the era I’m most reminded of is 90s indie… I’m thinking of bands like Pavement, Guided by Voices, Dinosaur Jr, the Breeders… the sound before it calcified into “alternative rock” and was still shot through with a sense of experimentation inherited from the early Rough Trade Records bands. As far as modern comparisons, I’d put Vaguess in the same lane as the World and Powerplant, bands that indie rockers probably think of as punk, but punkers think of as indie rock. Like those bands, Vaguess isn’t afraid to make an immediate-sounding pop tune, but they aren’t about to pander to anyone either, and they’re committed to the idea that a big melody goes down best with a healthy side of bite. Great production here too, with rich tones and a sense of space to the mix rather than all the instruments being crowded together. A really enjoyable record.