Local Albums

Giallows

Enochian Power Ballads and Placer

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Adam Wesconsin and Devin Alexander of Giallows have been making music together for much of their lives. In fact, in the first 10 seconds of Enochian Power Ballads, the groggy riffs and tentative tapping will instantly transport longtime fans back in time to Peabody’s, the bygone Quad City coffeehouse and live music hub where the duo played some of their first shows together.

But the title track, a 20-minute, fully improvised occult jam, quickly evolves to catch up with the sound they’ve developed over the years. Accompanied by drummer Ryan Collins, the three recorded three tracks in March of 2020. Released now in the wake of the initial COVID-19 lockdown, it’s no wonder the hour-long EP is the soundtrack to a late-night smoky basement hang.

Wesconsin describes the work on Enochian Power Ballads and June’s Placer, the band’s more recent single-session jam album, as a “purely musical conversation between the three of us … The big idea behind this experiment is to manifest the unique primal spirit of this band.”

Though called their “ongoing jam experiment,” these sessions don’t involve any sort of method, scientific or otherwise. There is no plan, no discussion regarding genre, theme or even time signature.

“I try to treat it like a séance,” says Wesconsin. “That’s when the good stuff comes. Nobody overthinking shit is gonna see a ghost, know what I mean?”

In the case of Enochian Power Ballads, the result is a trance-inducing marriage of Gothic shoe-gaze and stoner metal. Part of its charm are the little bits of discord just before the three all find each other again.

Placer—which sounds like Robert Smith if he’d been born in the early 1980s and grew up with that nice oil-based grunge influence—is organized more like a traditional album. Though generated using the same method and recorded under similar circumstances, it sounds more polished, more mature.

This is likely due to Giallows’ continued practice in improvisation; they can’t help but find patterns in each other’s musical “language,” so to speak. Listening to the two albums, one right after the other, is sort of like watching an old married couple reconnect and fall in love all over again.

Come to think of it, that may actually be happening. Well, there’s three of them. And two are already married. But ever since they played a well-received improvised set at Moline Noise Kitchen a few months ago, the band has been playing together and recording consistently, releasing four albums in 2020 alone. They also stream every Thursday on their Facebook page.

“There are moments in some of the sessions in which we get quiet, the air shifts and something comes in from another place,” Wisconsin said. “It’s interesting, because the more we jam together the more we’re able to recognize when this is happening.” —Melanie Hanson

Greenlake

Best Years EP

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On the inaugural World Art Day on April 15 this year, UNESCO tweeted, “In times of crisis, we need culture to make us resilient, give us hope, remind us that we are not alone.” Through the bad series of events in 2020, artists and art have been there to shine a light to help us collectively move through.

Cedar Rapids musician Haley Miller, who performs under the name Greenlake, was moved to release her debut EP Best Years in an effort to give back by supporting the protests surrounding the death of George Floyd.

“I waited a long while to release this EP,” Miller said in an email, “due to fear of people hating it/constantly just waiting for the perfect time. Once the protests in Minneapolis started and the Minnesota Freedom Fund started going around I knew I wanted to do something to be able to donate.”

Miller is donating everything she makes from sales of the EP to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

The five songs that make up Best Years were not written with the intent of making an album, but found their genesis in coping with the struggles of depression. Recorded and mastered by Gabe Reasoner, the songs exist in a stark contrast between personal, often hidden pain and a clawing desire to burst out for people to hear.

If Miller was conflicted in releasing this, what was captured to tape is bold and anthemic. “One day I’m going to wake up, and be glad that I did. But until that day comes, you’ll find me hidden in my sheets,” she sings in “Depression Memes.”

Most of the songs are structured primarily with voice and acoustic guitar—the way she performs live. The guitar is pulsing and rhythmic with little ornamentation, existing merely to frame her voice. Beautiful and naturally expressive with distinctively round vowels, her voice—when pushed for emphasis—breaks, and the listener hangs for every aching moment.

She breaks the mold a bit at the halfway point of the record in “Season,” which is a recitation over echoey, chiming electric guitar from the perspective of a tree dreading winter—a clever analog to her own seasonal affective disorder. “The hardest part about being a tree is not being able to see my worth when I’ve been stripped of my favorite parts of myself / When the bird leaves her nest for the winter, and the chipmunks start to hibernate, I begin to feel isolated / left with nothing but the snow and my thoughts.”

If there is an optimistic ray of light that shines here, it’s the actual joy Miller seems to have wrapped up in the desire to perform the songs. At the end of “Season,” she offers, “But, just when I feel like giving up, the sun comes out, the snow melts, the grass grows and I begin to sprout.”

Art helps in healing not just the audience but also the artist. Greenlake transformed a very personal suffering into a very public healing through Best Years. The hope and resiliency remind us that we are not alone. —Michael Roeder