In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.
As a professional journalist who writes a fair amount about music, I receive a ton of press releases for bands every day. Nine out of 10 of them do nothing for me, but then a band comes along one that’s described as “Think Fugazi meets Japandroids, with a double shot of indie-rock,” and it might as well say KYLE RYAN, THIS IS FOR YOU. Fugazi is one of my favorite bands of all time, and Japandroids’ Celebration Rock was my 2012 album of the year. The press release was quoting Popstache’s review of a track by Destroy This Place, and it’s pretty apt. The Detroit band specializes in the kind of “no-nonsense guitar rock” Josh Modell used to describe the late, great Gaunt, but Destroy This Place is less straightforward. Some of the songs on its excellent new self-titled album—out this week—hew closer to melodic post-hardcore (think Jawbox, Knapsack, Small Brown Bike), but the songs never stray far from propulsive, guitar-heavy rock. In that way, Destroy This Place reminds me of New York band Pilot To Gunner—whose Guilty Guilty made our best of 2012 list—one of my favorite bands of the 2000s. “Graves,” the eighth track on Destroy This Place, is a good indicator of what the album offers—and what kind of music sits close to my heart. Destroy This Place will see a lot of action in my iTunes this year.