Charleston Rock and Roll Club

“Gossamer” by Southern Femisphere

If You Like: Superchunk, Do Make Say Think, Rainer Maria, Weezer

A Digital Single by post-punk hypnotists, Southern Femisphere, Gossamer is an excellent and well-qualified indie-punk cut. Gossamer’s rock and roll is raw but polished a la “The Steve Albini Sound” with plenty of casually specific indie-rock indulgences: Soft/loud dynamics, dual harmonies, guitar-solos consisting almost entirely of fret harmonics, crash cymbals that mysteriously seem to layer the white-noise guitar sound, and lyrics that climax with the vocals going from urgent to forceful in a way that seems appropriate. The iconic indie formula of well-kept ideals tempered with hip realism are worked into a feverish frenzy of science-fact sounding poetry here, where the listener is granted that sense of triumph and relief that they are not alone in their passionate, mildly-schizo literacy like only the best indie-punk anthems can.

You listen to Gossamer and feel that the undocumented religion of indie-rock sensitivity and sensibility are the gospel once more, and are inspired with renewed conviction; by the end, you’ll be ready to ok-go all over again, wildly placing all bets on hope versus doubt if perhaps for the last time. Truly, Gossamer offers a lot of tried and true fare that falls honestly and good into the unofficial indie canon that is written on the hearts of the conversationalists you might find at hipster bars, out on the quad with acoustics, and among craigslist-musicians-ad “Lets start a really great band!” talks at late night diners (which are actually much less hard to come by than they sound… late night diners..anyone!?).

Southern Femisphere sounds red hot as they coolly distill these melodic-indie-punk idioms down to something as discreet and essential as a powder blue cardigan. With power and wit they prescribe jams that a discerning indie-rocker can be deemed utterly right to prefer, at least by indie-rock standards, and what is an indie-rocker at all if not discerning. The song is catchy, it nimbly expresses in its lyrics and overall musicality a bright, well-thought-out and consciously achieved kind of purity to me. It feels like a deep rumination on whether we can ever really justify the unprovable power of love, that secretly concludes with an answer of “yes” while the haters aren’t looking. The vocals instruct, command and boldly describe the costs of consciousness and caring in flares, flourishes and fits of indie-pop splendor and without pretense.

Southern Femisphere say what they need to say and still sound calm, cool and collected, impressively making their manifesto comments (“our lives are solvent/we become whole/again again we will win this infinite thing’) flatly, and gushing wildly like pop-punks but with the mythological restraint of a Chicago area post-rock jazzer. The likeable, undeniably Polyvinyl Records vibe has instant makeout-session appeal; Gossamer sounds familiar and pleasingly mid-nineties but howls with fresh-wound immediacy and a rock-and-roll integrity that was just unrehearsed last night. To be certain, it is a rare modern feat when a newer band gets the holy-grail indie sound right but also infuses it with fresh fury, state-of-the-art causticity, and leaves some fatty gristle around the rarer edges.

Southern Femisphere royally embody and nearly summarize entirely “that 90’s melodic-indie-punk sound” while simultaneously offering a refined portraiture of downtown religious practicum with a quality and verve that suggest such fuzz-pedal-fetishist favorites as grad-student-rental-spot squalor, misguided academic rigor, and that classic “refusal to dumb-down anything ever for anyone” glamour or else disorder that is the epitome of indie heroics. It has always been these smart, meek, overlooked outsiders from this mild-mannered neighborhood of rock music who instead of self-destructing, chose bravely to embrace self-discipline and the orthodoxy, and in doing so became impossible to overlook as innovators and revolutionaries. These men and women’s willingness to play by the rules the way the establishment demanded that they should later empowered them to arrive at a place where they could command a sophisticated and influential audience who were now willing to hear out their ideas however they wanted to express them, and as alternately-tuned as they felt like.

And that’s the whole Clark Kent thing, the “secret spy for the dear-heart punks undercover at Harvard or The Post” persona that distinguished the indie hero from the grunge god. That the self-deprecating, drug addicted, supposedly suicidal, marker-scribble-t-shirt-makers lost the rock-god popularity contest to horn-rimmed ivy leaguers is mostly undisputed.

Gossamer and really Southern Femisphere’s enitre catalog (2013’s Houses is a great EP to start with) is a cathartic but dry-eyed ode to hand-made, marker-scribble-t-shirts still being the very best, but also to virtuosity, character, and standards being what they are by definition for a reason.

In keeping with the tradition of what is perhaps the most enduring hallmark of indie society: a well-informed but not too elaborate sense of style, a small but piquant set of related links follows.

http://southernfemisphere.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/SouthernFemisphere/

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