Knumears find their screamo footing on debut record Directions

Or one of my cats; Leon, I have my eyes on you. Consequently, I had to jack-in to the debut Knumears record on bargain-bin Walmart dupes, fully at the mercy of how compressed the review link quality would end up being. I took out the headphones a half hour ago but can still hear the music playing, which is 15-Love between my tinnitus and the genre of post-hardcore.

Directions is a brand of meat-and-potatoes debut that lets a burgeoning act prop themselves up on genre fair before they go somewhere more interesting; think the first couple of Geese records, Michael Jackson rehashing the same pop slop of the mid-70s before really blowing some minds, and, simply out of courtesy, Knumears on Directions, showing the world they are perfectly competent and have all their limbs attached.

On a more strictly genuine note, I was pleasantly surprised at the craft going on behind the scenes, the L.A. trio truly do make the most of their limited personal and inventory space. Their performances are consistently intense, their drumming tight, their mixes balanced overall (in what I will call benefit of the doubt), and their sense of pacing is refined to a tee. What most immediately grabs the listener are the sumptuously melodic guitar leads which highlight that all-important connection the genre shares with glam rock; I believe the rule goes, “If camp is good enough for MCR, it’s good enough for you.”

On a more unwieldy, cynically tryhard note, you can say with increasingly gritted teeth that they are indeed a trio. The instrumental ambitions of the record seem to be proof of basic ability in crafting a screamo/post-hardcore record, like an audition to the scene at large. While the record sails along at a brisk, goldilocks zone of 26 minutes, by minute 18 or so I had given up waiting for some other shoe to drop.

While this really would’ve melted some faces in the second Clinton administration, us folks living in the modern music-listening world expect a bit more fleshing out when it comes to this genre intersection. Add a string arrangement, tie together a concept record, sell your soul to the devil and buy a piano for god’s sake. Just never put in an 808. Never go full Sleep Token.

At this point, I remain unconvinced that any genre veteran would be brought to their knees with emphatic refrains of “Lisan Al-Gaib!” at the prospect of this record, but I’ll concede it’s going to win a much longer game: the good faith and fandom of some new scene kid who heard this and put their fuckin’ poster on his wall. Mom and Dad may even try to take it down. If that happens somewhere in the cosmic ether that is Los Angeles, and if little Timmy has to play this quietly in the backseat on the way to Sunday School, then Knumears, you might’ve already made it.