I pickup the faintest sliver of “Age of Consent” seeping from a 3rd story window, and it's there, in my brain, in the tapping of my foot, in my mouthing of the lyrics at the Key Food checkout. I know those moves – a middle-register bass line here, some synthesizers and drum machines there – and I acknowledge they've been successfully absorbed into the rock playbook.
Now, take a hairdryer, melt that sound, throw it in a muddy creek, jump in with it, and you get Dead Gaze. The melancholy things-unsaid lyrics combined with the perfect amount of influence from a heatwarped copy of Power, Corruption & Lies, and we have two new songs from the Oxford, MS-based homebros (soon to be released as a single on Denver's Fire Talk label). Unlike all the bands who try so hard to emulate a sound they've heard before, Dead Gaze does it with such a haunting happy-sad genuiness, it has the appeal that some songs aren't written, just born. Real talk, it wouldn't be too surprising if these guys had never even heard of New Order.
