Shuteye Unison open like The Stooges would.

The opening of Our Future Selves is brash and bratty and sets one up for something they are ultimately not expecting - whether that’s a good or a bad thing is still a mystery to me. First off, I liked it. The second time around, I liked it even more. “Be Kimball” would be that Stooges-esque opener. It sounds and feels like a punchy punk standard should, in that it catches attention but differentiates itself with timid vocals hummed with a voice like velvet.

Track number two (“Our Future Selves”) is where it all changes. From punk we find an ambience of delicacy that sounds like an entirely different band altogether - except for those lovely vocals. Lovely is the only way they can be described overall. Not in a prim way, not in a posing way. Just in a simplistic, wholesome manner in that they are sweet to listen to against the backdrop of entrancing guitars and marching drums.

As the album moves along, different moods are dropped upon you. You’ve got the standards of happiness and potential anger but through that confused mess of buzzing vocals and defiant guitar arranged in satisfying disarray; as a listener you reach into the depths of implied loneliness and implied ecstasy. Everything is up to interpretation.

However, the outstanding downfall is that some tracks leave a little too much interpreting to be done. This is particularly the case with the longer lasting, slower burning songs. A reasonable four minute average of a song leaves a taste in a listeners mouth, but the garble that drags on from six to seven minutes soon turns that taste sour. It feels like far too much, far too soon. Needless to say that shorter is sweeter when it comes to Shuteye Unison - they’re not a band that needs to dally around overwrought tracks that go on for far too long.

But before you even reach the fifth track of the album, you transcend the boundaries from excitement to melancholy mourning and back again. Any better known band and this would be a cause of annoyance for me, personally, because of its inconsistency. However, Shuteye Unison seem to do it with an acute awareness for their progression. As a band, they steer a course with a keen eye on a certain destination. Unfortunately, I’m not perceptive enough to figure out just what such a destination is (hypnotic world domination, maybe?), but I appreciate being invited along on the journey.