Although genre tags are still used to impose some semblance of order, bands like SoCal's untitled (halo) are proof of modern music's ever more lawless, label-fluid pursuits. Clearly well-eared, and with a genuinely innovative sound that pulls from hip hop, Philly shoegaze noise, and digicore-meets-cloud pop, to name just a few, untitled (halo)'s reference points are both diverse and unexpected. What it's all added up to over the band's two EPs so far has been interesting enough to drum up quite some buzz for this full-length debut, but the album casts its net so widely that any sense of identity they might have had before now feels strangely neutered, and sometimes lost completely.
Opening pair "aimee lou wood freestyle" and "how to make your love (stay)" have the general air of a TAGABOW 'loosy'. They are specific in their online-ness, an unmistakable fusion of the records their creators love. But being a music nerd isn't the only fundament required to make quality work. A sample of the lyrics: "My bitch is so bad / You're so mad because i'm everything you lack" and "Don't touch me if you ain't touching stacks."
If this was a west coast rap record, a listener might say "That sounds about right". On , though, the same lines land like an identity crisis. As they're delivered I wince, as if witnessing someone trying really, really hard to pretend they like football in order to make friends at work. "I'm in LA counting stacks / You're in Jersey on your ass," they declare on "default factory settings". Bragging lyrics for sure have their place, but on this record they seem to have wandered into the wrong room.
It would be untrue to claim that the album is riddled with cringe and a lack of direction. The band know exactly who they are on album highlight "easy rider"; perhaps the ultimate embodiment of what they're trying to do, it draws on the lineage of shoegaze while capturing a contemporary youthfulness – the sound of your new favourite Bandcamp discovery.
On "you're going to jail now", repetition of the phrase "you always change your mind" constructs and deconstructs its meaning, alluding to a familiar unpredictability that can be both exhilarating and exhausting. But too much of the record is broadly mid-tempo and does little to startle the senses. There's a beauty to the world they create, but it's too easily dissolved and its inauthenticity laid bare by a half-hearted embrace of rap and a hip-hop culture that doesn't suit them.
They know the trail they want to blaze but untitled (halo) haven't set it alight, missing the moment despite their evident potential.