Peace goes guitar-heavy on My Face

My Face (Pop Echo)

Just how many killer guitar licks will fit on a 42-minute LP? Peace answers this question on My Face by packing 11 postpunk bangers with hypnotically interwoven guitar leads and fleet-fingered bass lines. Riffs are piled on top of riffs, making this an exhausting but rewarding listen.

The album gets off to a pulse-boosting start with the curiously titled “The Uma Uma Truth List”, which uses thundering tom drums to anchor its repetitive groove and densely spiralling guitar melodies. The rest of the album is similarly relentless in its six-stringed assault. “Quite Frankly” bristles with jagged-glass guitars, while the thrilling closer “Common Trash” culminates in an outro of finger-tapping fretboard heroics. Even when the band eases off for the folk-noir slow burn of “Midnight”, the break doesn’t last long, and the song explodes halfway through with pounding rhythms and a fractured, noodling solo.

With so much excitement coming from the amps, frontman Dan Geddes rarely offers much in the way of memorable vocal hooks. He delivers most of his lyrics in a half-spoken drawl, and this slacker approach evokes the swagger of Pavement-era Stephen Malkmus. In the rare moments when Geddes sings an actual melody, his voice is a lovely, Ian Curtis–style baritone croon that will serve him well should the band ever decide to switch to a more pop-friendly style. Still, as long as the fretboard workouts are as mind-melting as this, nobody’s likely to notice the lack of hummable tunes.