Landowner is a five-piece band from Massachusetts spearheaded by Dan Shaw, formerly of Health Problems. Following their album Blatant from 2018, the band will be releasing a new record called Consultant on September 25. It continues their idiosyncratic approach to writing songs, which Shaw describes by saying it’s “as if an abrasively clean band were reading the sheet music of hardcore songs.”
This clean-meets-fury approach is encapsulated in lead single “Phantom Vibration”, which vaults forward on cut-glass guitars, bass, and drums, but still packs in plenty of tension through the precision of their combination. Over the top of this, Shaw’s vocals are destitute and slightly unhinged, touching on many modern issues – and he only gets more unsettled as Landowner drive the song into deeper levels of franticness. The instrumentation may be unadorned, but Landowner still throw in plenty of dynamics and bubbling vocals to give “Phantom Vibration” depth and guile, which will keep it spinning around your skull.
Landowner’s new album Consultant comes out through Born Yesterday Records on September 25. You can find the band on Facebook and Bandcamp.
