The Sheaves - A Salve For Institution

Thrillingly brash and forthright return from The Sheaves, the Phoenix, AZ outfit that first landed on our radar when issuing their debut through Minimum Table Stacks last year. Though the five piece have found a new home - two in fact, as French imprint SDZ and relatively new US label Dot Dash, are co-handling release - the short gap between releases dates inevitably means not much has changed with The Sheaves sound. If it aint broke, don't try to fix it, and these lot certainly don't appear as if they're much interested in trying to repair anything. Like on their straight-out-the-gate nailed on debut, A Salve For Institution excels in the kind of art damaged DIY anti-pop Swell Maps pioneered, whilst also bringing into the light that direct psychic connection between The Fall and early Flying Nun. Atonal, repetitious, wonky, sometimes wrong, The Sheaves have it in spades, until it's over with far too quickly (these are short songs, there is no excess) and you're compelled to relight and relight again. I thought it weird this one wasn't on Siltbreeze, but then I see a Tom Lax endorsement in the label PR and the numbers started to add up. You can't release them all, I suppose, but someone did and just as well. The kind of underground murmurings and gesticulations that's as American as working an 8 day week and just as corrupted.