Dissecting the sound of Spokane, Washington’s rock outfit Pit will lead you to finding nothing too drastic or different about their surf-tinged indie rock sound. Yet there’s something intriguing about their latest self-titled album that got me engaged from start to finish. If you’ve been listening to a lot of bands these days you’ll find fairly common ingredients here – chunky riffs, great melodic change-ups and awesome hooks. So what’s the deal? At first I was quite puzzled by what kept me pressing the replay button – then the answer dawned on me. It’s actually quite simple – their songs have a certain character. An X-factor trait elevates their sound to different heights.
What separates them from their peers is how effortless the whole thing feels. There’s a certain spark of spontaneity and flow to each of these songs. Opener “Paint by Numbers” is light and bouncy with a rock and roll shuffle and a fluid sunny riff. The vocals provide much of the song’s emotional highlights – with a demeanor that easily shifts between laid-back to hung-up and with the occasional sneer. Top these with dynamic rhythms and stellar guitar riffs and things never get boring. Songs like “Budge” provide a melodic roller coaster of jumps and stutters with a great calming bridge section that contrasts with the crazy start. “Limbo” shifts the whole tone of the album in a slow-dancing ballad with a disorienting twist.
Occasionally though, the band cracks up their laid-back demeanor – turning it up to eleven and making the songs fall into delirium. Examples of this are the aptly titled “Dummy Syndrome” with its swirling riffs and wonderful harmonies. A song that talks about someone feeling misaligned with reality. “Lob the Ball” is another example, a garage rock tune full of chunky guitars and a restless rhythm that feels like someone’s mental state going downhill. Yet with all this craziness, it never ceases to be fun! This is what I mean by effortless, a lot of thought and work clearly went into these songs but they feel so natural and flow so well that you forget you’re listening to a rock song and just go for the ride.
My favorite track is “Things Start to Move” – a punk song about big national companies encroaching on regional space and stepping on the toes of local enterprises. A song with razor-edged spite that puts Pit on a serious note. Whatever they do in these albums, they hardly ever miss. Check out Pit below, one of our smoothest listening experiences to date.
