Within seconds, you’re running. You’re not entirely certain why; the adrenaline has taken over. You need to keep going. Let’s get away from here. “Escape,” the first track on Hayes Noble’s new album, could be the fuel needed to keep your feet moving, bounding step after step, pushing forward. The Spokane-via-Galena, IL songwriter and guitarist bursts through a shroud of lo-fi bashfulness on his second LP, As It Was, As We Were. It’s his fullest body of work to date, locking in as a trio, and broadening the sounds explored on prior releases. At the current rate, it’ll only keep expanding.
Noble tends towards gauzy indie rock, intertwined with bursts of Dinosaur Jr.-esque fuzz and the occasional squall. Touting another pillar of 90s guitar music, As It Was nails the mix of uncompromised emotions and bleeding guitar tone of the Smashing Pumpkins. “In Search Of,” seguing directly from “Escape,” carries this influence like a heart tattoo with frenetic breaks in the latter half, a timeless chord progression, and a riff that spirals in on itself. The prospect of fireworks is teased, but always kept under control. Nevertheless, it simmers longer than expected. Unadorned straightforwardness opens a canvas of projection, perhaps relation, especially with the lyrics.
Tracks like “Comets” and “Midcoast Kids” are never self-satisfied, always genuine; often self-contained, but always musically joyous. Anhedonia is painted in broad, watercolor strokes, tapping into the perpetual longing of younger days. I think I’m better off alone. A path diverges: one way leads through thickets, mud, and maybe an end to all this loneliness; the other is well-paved, even comfortable, and heads deep into a familiar underground. Change it or bury it — it’s easy to remain in the rut of coping. The palpable longing in Noble’s voice isn’t enough to mute the uncertainty
Rather cheekily, “The End” is not the end. The band resumes the sprint it began 30 minutes earlier, tosses off an effortlessly shredding guitar solo, and keeps going headfirst. Quasi-title track “Got Over It” opts for clawing rawness, not the expected cooldown after an extended dash. At the risk of reading too much into it, Noble is embracing the absence of a true ending — whatever may have felt like an insurmountable conclusion at the time was actually another bump in the road. So it goes with stubbornness. There’s no need to be tied down by fear; why wouldn’t you choose to be weightless?
Written by Aly Eleanor
