Sounding unabashedly similar to vintage Superchunk
and never embarrassed for it, Indianapolis’ Eisenhower
Field Day swerves and sweats and voraciously emits
pure indie rock carnage. Sure the guitars sound stuck
in 1995 and the melodies feel slightly used, but Let’s
Not Tell Lies plays like some beatific thrift shop
discovery, some monumental unearthing at the record
shop cut-out bin.
“National Sunday Law” is a bouncing gem of basement-show wizardry,
while delinquent melodies and fuzzbomb distortion make for a stellar cut. And
the wave-crush wall-of-guitar opening on “The Backs of My Arms” is
pure indie bliss. The wonderfully muted and subdued lyrics, always just barely
out of reach, allow the listener to interpret and enforce whatever true meaning
they like, giving Eisenhower Field Day an everyman (and woman thanks to Holly
Butler’s beautifully subdued harmonies and duel melodics) reliability.
The slow-chug demolition of “Conversation Lows” brilliantly leads
into the peppy diffusion of garage band sprawl and choked back, fumbling-love
verses of “Two Pockets.”
The addition of the band’s Our Time in the Colonies EP
to the disc lends the entire endeavor a slightly homogenizing
effect, but allows for the inclusion of the love-crush
battlefield melancholia of “Don’t Throw
Away” and a funky-short instrumental called “Driving to China.” By
the time EFD drifts in and out of the boy-girl singalong of “In Our Shoes,” any
casual listener will be earnestly yearning for the
golden days of self-distributed indie rock.
Favorite Track: Track 4, "The Backs of My Arms”
