No Kill

A chance encounter on t'interweb led me to the band No Kill  and their brand new single "Better" - a song and band deserving of a much wider audience - and the rest is, as they say, history...

Hailing from Maine (the bit of The States that borders my two favourite Canadian provinces of Québec and New Brunswick), the Brooklyn-Based duo of Jamie Cogar and Andrew Trouwborst have been playing and collaborating musically for a number of years, starting out in a short-lived metal band named Hypercub.

No Kill were formed back in 2010 and released their first EP "Loose Teeth" a couple of years later. Featuring five stabs of faultless guitar-propelled indie-pop, the songs channeled jangly guitar pop, shoegaze, a touch of alt-country (i.e. not yer pappy's Grand Ole Opry) - even a wry touch of gospel on the ridiculously addictive"Hallelujah" - a healthy respect for sixties-pop alongside and the cherry-on-the-top killer vocals of Jamie and Andrew.



Augmented to a four-piece - with the addition of Wesley Rose on bass and Kyle Jutkiewicz on drums and percussion - the band returned with a second EP, "New Dirt" last year.   Building on the (to these ears) successful template of their debut EP - but augmented with a healthy dose of fuzzy dream-pop and finely honed girl-guy vocal duelling. Listening to the two albums back-to-back, there's evidence of a richer, more expansive sound that has been achieved without sacrificing the frisson of energy apparent on "Loose Teeth." In fact if I'd have heard "Big muff scream" - with its big gobs of reverbed, noise-pop guitars and sweet vocal sparring - when it was first released it would have been a shoe-in for my "best of..." compilation - an honour that would have befallen the track "New dirt" as well...

And so as 2015 draws to the close - stripped back down to a two-piece - Jamie (adding drums to her repertoire) and Andrew have been busy in the studio, releasing "Better" - as a free download(!) - which serves as a teaser for what should be an eagerly anticipated new EP. The song is yet another sumptuous slice of hazy guitar dream-pop. There's a Cocteau-ish intro which leads to a strongly hypnotic air of subdued melancholy - Jamie's plaintive vocals suggests that all is not well on the relationship front; "...Are we both going to die, Before we make it better again..?" she repeats over and over again during the subdued refrain. The middle-eight is to die for, there's just a hint of the shoegazy, noise-pop of their early songs, but the warmth of the production adds texture and depth alongside evidence of a band who have the confidence to push their boundaries.

To be honest this is a band that I need to see live - and although the band are playing an early evening in-store gig at the 521 5th Ave., New York, branch of Urban Outfitters on December 10th  - I'm hoping for something a little bit closer to home (and warmer - there's an Urban Outfitters in Malibu, btw...) But if you ever wanted proof that there's so much good music out there that as I've already suggested really deserves a to be heard by a wider audience, I'll offer No Kill as exhibit A - in fact if it wasn't for a chance encounter on an obscure corner of cyberspace, I'd have been none the wiser.

Would have been my loss I suspect... 

No Kill (Website), (SoundCloud)
"Better" (Bandcamp)