bare mutants: affliction

From the bands he was wrapped up in early in his teenage years, such as The Muggles, Defilers, Real Cool Killers, and the formidable Guilty Pleasures, to his ascent to mainstream recognition with The Ponys, it’s clear that Jered Gummere is known as one of the most important songwriters of our generation. His influence on pop music over the first half of this century is undeniable, impacting most notably Jay Reatard, and much of the current Brooklyn sound, right up to all the modern bands that still try to capture that elusive something The Ponys delivered on a nightly basis. Ahead of their time undoubtedly, and with that same pioneering spirit fully intact, Gummere’s newest assemblage, Bare Mutants, coalesces all of the most pivotal nuances of his repertoire into a perfectly minimal, mid-tempo snapshot of this morosely powerful tone. Adding in essential Chicago nutrients such as Seth Bohn from Mannequin Men on bass and Jeanine O’Toole from The 1900s on backups and tambourine, along with multi-talented friends Matt Holland on drums and Leslie Deckard on organ, Bare Mutants have come together as a tightly-wound, tense-yet-tranquil wall of sound that surges and ebbs within the raw emotion and gut-wrenching intensity of a band that’s on its way somewhere big. None of the heart-crushing tracks on this debut album are going to quicken anyone’s pulse, yet the solemn seduction that awaits within these celestial grooves is immeasurable in its trance-inducing tension. —Todd Novak, Victim of Time / HoZac Records