Wallows

One Liner: B-list movie star band with great indie rock chops.

Wikipedia Genre: Alternative rock, post-punk
Home: L.A.

Poster Position: 21
Day: Saturday at 12:45
Weekend Two Only.

Thoughts: Pretty good stuff.  I sometimes clown on bands that love the 80's new wave sound so hard, but this one works for me.  Just one EP in their collection, 2018's Spring, full of guitars that sound like they spent a lot of time listening to the Cure.  The top popular track showcases that sound, this is "Pictures of Girls," with 3.5 million streams.

The lead singer looks like an actor from one of the YA-novel-adapted movies I've seen recently.  Huh.  He is an actor, named Braeden Lemasters, but none of the movies and shows listed in his bio match up to anything I have seen recently (except for the Stephen King adaptation to 11.22.63).  He looks like someone else, man.

Oh no wait!  There are two lead singers.  The other one is Dylan Minnette, who I saw in the video and who looks like someone famous, because he's always staring at me from my Netflix suggested videos.  He stars in the 13 Reasons Why show, and was in Lost, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, and the Goosebumps movie.  That is why I know his pretty little face.  I haven't actually watched the 13 Reasons Why show, I'm just not so sure about teenage suicide being my entertainment these days, with my oldest only a few months shy of being a teen.

Anyway, they put out a few 2017 singles, and I actually think some of those songs are their best.  "Sun Tan" is chilled rock and "Pulling Leaves off Trees" is very good.  But the new EP definitely sticks to the new 80's formula.  They do a weird detour for "1980's Horror Film," which sounds very much like a Smiths/Morrisey track that was just barely left off of the Ferris Bueller soundtrack.  

The band came together as children in Southern California, and apparently played the Warped Tour in 2011 (when the members would have been 14?).  But their first single as Wallows was "Pleaser," which is their most streamed track by a large chunk at 7.2 million streams.

I'm a fan.  This music is fun and feels like it will make for a good show of loud rock and roll in the Fall.  Let's do it.