Her New Knife. By Adris Raal
Discover Blogly is The FADER’s curated roundup of our favorite new music discoveries.
For the Philadelphia-based band Her New Knife, the term “noise” is both a freeing and limiting genre descriptor. The heavy, dark drones of the band’s guitars are intense, almost punishing, and the vocals moody, dreary, indecipherable: Across tracks like “12r” and “kittyriff” on their new EP, chrome is lullaby, for instance, you have no choice but to succumb.
When I saw Her New Knife open for former Gen F stars julie and They Are Gutting a Body of Water at Webster Hall in October in what was undoubtedly any shoegaze and noise fan’s dream bill (I spotted Hotline TNT frontman Will Anderson purchasing a HNK t-shirt at the merch booth), their assault of guitars and noise and dissonance felt freeing.
Her New Knife follow in the footsteps of other noisy indie-rock greats hailing from Philly like Spirit of the Beehive, TAGABOW, and blue smiley in harnessing the beauty found in the weirder, darker, and experimental throes of guitar music. Like them, HNK incorporate poppy, video-game music with doomgaze and lean into the liminal space of what “guitar” music can be. Members Edgar Atencio (vocals, guitar), Ben Kachler (guitar), Carolina Schooley (bassist) and Elijah Ford (drums) met at Florida State University a few years ago, but have since decamped to Philly. Though their music often gets associated with the “shoegaze” descriptor, it’s more of a mood designator than genre. “When we were shooting a video the other night, this drunk lady said it’s like grunge from hell, and I kinda fucked with that,” guitarist Ben Kachler told Macalester College Radio when asked about their sound.
The band’s latest EP, chrome is a lullaby, released midway through their tour with julie and TAGABOW, is a six-track collection of guttural instrumentation and shoegazey post-punk that calls to mind Duster. It was put out on Julia’s War, a Philly record label headed by TAGABOW lead singer Doug Dulgarian that’s been responsible for some of the most exciting and interesting guitar music in North America right now; Wednesday had early releases on the record label, and it also serves as a community home for guitar bands like Full Body 2, Knifeplay, and feeble little horse.
EP opener “kittyriff” is intense and pulsating, a no-nonsense introduction to the project; “vitamin beauty” is the group’s most outwardly pop and melodic offering, a lo-fi track mixing ’90s slacker rock and grunge-pop, like if Happyness and Drop Nineteens somehow fused together before launching into an explosion of distortion. The grunge-heavy and ghostly “purepurepure” is already a crowd favorite; when played at the Webster Hall show in October, the crowd seemed to swell with a giddy, tense excitement.
It’s clear that Her New Knife, now buoyed by the julie tour, have been amassing a steady loyal following, and their Discord is used actively and passionately: In it, HNK fans chat about their experiences watching the band, commiserate over not getting a chance to speak to the band members at the merch table, and wax lyrical about live debuts of unreleased songs. It is also, at times, used as a news server. A few days ago, someone posted about Young Thug being set free: “thugger is coming home. chat we are so back,” one user wrote. “Fuck brat summer it’s philly gaze autumn,” declared another. Philly gaze autumn it is, indeed.