AUTUMN SWEATER - Second Session

8 songs
25:22 minutes
***** ****
(self-released)

Bandpage

Last autumn, quite out of the blue, a young Luxembourgish indie rock band named AutumnSweater surprised with the release of their debut EP First Session, on which they offered their perfect take on Nineties indie rock. The band announced that they would rather release EPs on a regular basis than have us wait longer for longplayers. And yet I wouldn’t have expected their second EP, fitfully titled Second Session, so soon after the first one. A good half year later, we get seven more tracks plus an outro, and if you think the band has acted maybe a little too fast, you have to think again.

Once again, the EP has been self-released and can be purchases for any price you see fit on their Bandcamp page. The major difference to the debut is that the band has tightened their songwriting. So there is no fatigue to be made out. To the contrary, the songs feel even more matured and fleshed out than last year. Let’s start with the opener Matches where the band shows their love for late Eighties Sonic Youth. The grumbling bass guitar is accompanied by two jangly guitars. Add to that the band’s laconic vocals, and you have a track that would have worked incredibly well on Daydream Nation. Autumn Sweater are no one-trick pony though, so the following Waterloo, at five minutes the longest track on the EP, is a moodier track with the band’s typical brand of weird lyrics. The two guitars complement each other really well, with both guitarists playing a quite lyrical style. The vocals are shared throughout the album by three of the musicians, so that even the vocal performances never sounds the same. On the short Sundays, the band relocates itself somewhere between Brit pop and happy punk. Water Your Plants is more typical for the band’s sound, and this time we get a Television influence via the guitars, like Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd in the late Seventies. On Tell Her, there is a certain Sixties influence, à la Kinks, with fantastic backing vocals. Analog once again picks up the pace with a certain post punk – more punk than post though – feeling, before the melancholic ballad Stay At Home ends the regular part. The one-minute outro Bongo Starr doesn’t really add to the greatness of the otherwise really huge improvement.

Like the first time, Autumn Sweater managed to create a warm lo-fi production that is miles from the polished boredom of so-called modern indie rock bands. Instead we find a band that initially rooted in the Nineties, have peered on their second EP also into the previous decades, making their sound even richer. I dare say that they are the only band from Luxembourg that I consider to be a true indie rock band. As they are also gifted and apparently very quick songwriters, it should only be a matter of time before more people will discover them. So far they still keep a rather low profile, with Second Session having been released with not much fanfare, but if you happen to stumble across this band, you will be surprised by the charm and authenticity of their music. True greatness is about to happen here!