After making a pair of albums with
Steve Albini
behind the controls that emphasized the band's lean, powerful attack,
Screaming Females
have aimed for a change-up on 2015's
Rose Mountain
. On their sixth full-length album,
were seemingly shooting for a beefed-up sound by teaming with producer and engineer
Matt Bayles
, whose resume includes projects with
Mastodon
,
Isis
, and
Pearl Jam
. And it is true that
sounds noticeably bigger and fuller than
' work with
Albini
, but thankfully, it doesn't sound particularly slicker;
Bayles
does wonders for
Michael Abbate
's bass tone, and he locks in with
Jarrett Dougherty
's drums with impressive accuracy and impact, but it's
Marissa Paternoster
who benefits most.
Paternoster
's guitar work is straightforward but effectively fills out the melodic space with her thick, buzzy tone, and her vocals are excellent on these sessions, more nuanced and dynamic than before but with enough passion to match the striking force of the music.
sounds more like a rock album than what the group has delivered before, and in this context, that's a compliment; this is the sort of music that gives the phrase "power trio" a good name, with the musicians bringing their fair share to the performances without getting in one another's way, and
is dominated by full-bodied and emotionally powerful music that doesn't overplay its hand. Without cashing in the indie rock sound that defined them in the past,
have gone out of their way to show they have other tricks at their disposal, and
is one of their most accomplished and satisfying efforts to date. ~ Mark Deming