The Sound Of Deceit Album Review: Enjoy Experiments Further with Punk Music
The Garden, Enjoy, and Puzzle are a holy trinity of experimental punk music. Identical twins Wyatt and Fletcher Shears are the duo behind the infamous Orange County band The Garden that has taken the current state of punk rock music to a new level. The two have their own individual projects, Fletcher releasing music under the name Puzzle and Wyatt under Enjoy. This week, Wyatt Shears took to his instagram to announce the arrival of Enjoy’s new EP, The Sound Of Deceit.
The Sound OF Deceit album cover via Spotify
Experimenting with electronic sounds, non-musical effects, surf rock riffs as well as a wide range of different guitar pedals, Enjoy’s music is typically hard to categorize into one genre. However, for The Sound of Deceit, Shears strips down his sound and takes a much more traditional punk approach. His signature use of the Electro-Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi guitar pedal and Visual Sound V2 Series V2JH Jekyll and Hyde pedal are amplified to give The Sound Of Deceit its undeniably punk inspired sound. However, His signature is definitely an echo and slight delay of the guitar, which of course is present throughout the songs on his new release.
The album starts out with the first single which was released earlier than the rest of the album, Slip of the Memory. The song mixes different types of guitar pedals and riffs, to create a unique contrast of fast paced distortion and reverberated, slowed chords. This contrast is Shear’s signature. It appears in the album’s second track Drink Myself To Sleep, as well as track 4, Flag And A Heart. The vocals in most of the album's songs are done in the typical Enjoy/The Garden style; Hidden under vocal effects and are often, especially in Drink Myself To Sleep, delivered in a chant-like format.
The tone of the album slows down with the third track, Drift. A pedal-heavy guitar focused song, the title accurately describes the feeling that it would give listeners. With a much slower pace, the song has a much more mellow feel to it than the first two tracks. Shears also has an admirable ability to make such a melancholic song so stimulating. Emotional, yet exciting. Sentimental Parade is another track on the melancholic side of the songs on the album. Without lyrics, Sentimental Parade really highlights what Shears can do with the guitar, bass and drums alone. These songs also highlight the way that he can make a song that feels so simple to listen to, yet, in reality, is quite sonically complex.
Via instagram
Another Day Passes, solidifies punk music as his main inspiration for the album. The sixth track on the album uses what could be a record low amount of effects on the sound and guitar when it comes to Enjoy songs, with his usual signature echoed guitar effect only appearing a few times before or after the chorus throughout the song.
Overall, the most surprising thing about the album to me was its leniency towards a classic punk rock format. Though it isn't missing Shears’ usual twists and signature sounds, the album still pays homage to a classic genre rather than being something entirely new within itself as his music typically is. That being said, I wouldn’t say that the album is better or worse than the rest of his music, but simply different. I would suggest the EP to anyone who is getting into Enjoy for the first time and wants something that will help them transition into a true Enjoy listener.
