The Sheaves - A Salve For Institution LP

"Upstart New York label Dot Dash Sounds have teamed up with Paris' estimable SDZ to bang out this sophomore effort by The Sheaves, an outfit of desert peccaries whose swinley snouts have expertly strung together another string of stinging pearls for thine earholes. If the Placebo Records track team had a miler as lopey as this bunch, those trophy cups would have been perpetually brimming with Champagne's finest export." – Tom Lax, Siltbreeze Records

"The LP is composed of eleven two-ish-minute vignettes that can roughly be categorized as DIY post-punk or jangly lo-fi indie rock. You get stuff that sounds like early FALL playing the VELVET UNDERGROUND’s “The Gift,” SWELL MAPS locking into the loosest krautrock groove, some indistinct blend of GBV/BUILT TO SPILL/SEBADOH, or—as with my favorite track on the record (and one of my favorite tracks of the year), “In Center (X-Static)”—a shit-hot mix of, like, CRIME’s “Terminal Boredom” and the extraterrestrial buzz punk of CHROME’s “TV as Eyes.” But the whole record has this sun-bleached and sandblasted quality, like it was recorded after the band was forced to wander the Sonoran Desert for a week. The vocals, which often sound like someone doing a stuffy-nosed Mark E. Smith impression, are so odd and loosely multi-tracked at times that it makes you feel a little delirious. Real strange, but also real great!" - Alex Howell / Maximum Rock'n'Roll