Fallow Field is
Old Haunts' Kill Rock Stars debut, consisting of two previous EPs from the Olympia stomp rockers with six new tracks added. It's sorta country, this band's stuff, with Craig Extine's slippery yowl out front of spindly guitars and the kind of rhythm that only requires one big kick drum. (Though there's a snare too, and at least one cymbal.) "Deflect It" and "Boots Are Clubs" are great distillations of this. But
Old Haunts also have a punk sensibility in the vein of the
Wipers or Chicago's Drapes -- intriguingly rough edges, and songs that are tossed-off but still dangerous. "By the Bay"'s pace is hyper and impatient, "Old World" adds rickety farmhouse piano to a typically tense pacific northwest indie rattle, and "You Could Never Know" only needs slashing guitar and the choppy reports of a snare to make Extine's vocal sound perfect and urgent.
Fallow Field is only about a half-hour-long, and rarely wavers from its favorite sound, staccato guitar notes pecking at muddy but expressive basslines. (See "Cult Baby.") But despite their limitations,
Old Haunts bring a cool sense of creakiness to their songs. "Walk Through the Woods" is aptly named --
Fallow Field sounds like hill people's punk rock. ~ Johnny Loftus