Some Velvet Sidewalk : Critters Encore
Musical eras change, and it’s been a while since finding the next big thing meant scoping out alternative rock’s zaniest. Oversaturated music scenes may be leaning more toward that environment today, though, where instead of executives looking for their next Cobain, the internet flocks to microtonal papier-mâché aliens. As contemporaries of the aforementioned grungemaster, Olympia’s Some Velvet Sidewalk have returned right when their own oddness is a sought-after treasure, with no ounce of their idiosyncrasy lost in the intervening decades.
Featuring consistent bandleader Al Larsen and longtime drummer Don Blair, the experimental “love rock” slingers have also returned without much clarity over what defines them. Dinosaurs and ice cream, mostly, amongst Larsen’s incomprehensible lyrical stews that are bizarre even by the standards of contemporaries they once shared space with on Kill Rock Stars’ debut collection. And this creature-feature befittingly titled Critters Encore does present monkeys, hawks, and rabbits repeatedly, only through Larsen theorizing about wormholes or debating with promoters about what food there is to eat after playing a show. It’s a tricky thing to grasp, but that seems wholly the point. And no wonder that his influence can be seen in Chat Pile’s stage-pacing B-movie enthusiast frontman Raygun Busch.
SVS play less mechanically and fast-paced as they once did (as on somewhat-hit “Mousetrap”), and not quite so gnashingly as Washington State indie/post-hardcore leaders. At times, the presentation is completely loose; the musical and verbal excursions riff of a draft script to the point that every bewildering listen—like Larsen’s beloved dinosaurs—seem to have evolved by themselves since the last time you pressed play. “Walking/Falling” layers, distorts and drags multiple streams of consciousness over the other. The guitars wander in similarly murky blues ’n’ roll to underscore Larsen’s shrieking across “Rabbit Running” and for the brilliant repeating riff that rounds out “This Minute,” captured remarkably well considering the duo’s commitment to lo-fi aesthetics.
A similar misdirection is found on “So Be It, Bro,” sounding like it’s never once bothering to commit to a groove then switching from GarageBand button-bashing to a formidable smash by its end. “Howwling,” a growling ditty, most strongly resembles a straightforward rock song, with reverbed solos punctuated with fun whoops and hand claps. The hypnotic riffs across “Is Damaged,” too, could never be morphed out of thin air by an amateur, its feel matching Larsen’s lyrical frustrations with telemarketers. Likewise on “Velvet Rabbit Portal,” Blair’s rhythm section lets the frontman do as he wishes to talk about space, a “carbon footprint like a brontosaurus” and that “you’ll be fine in the Pacific Northwest, just don’t inhale!” in, somehow, one of the album’s more coherent moments.
This left-field return from a left-field band is best defined by their re-recording of “Snow,” an extremely rough live cut from debut Appetite for Extinction. Also recorded in-person here, its greater fidelity helps ramp up its chaos with the tempo shifting up through the gears, stopping, and then restarting, before giving the audience a moment for a polite bemused clap. It’s a freaky album of either silliness or profundity, or both, with a sense that the songs have their own life: a feral animal party that its name alludes to, where even the songwriters seem unable to control what’s going on. Very befitting for our modern times, after all.
Label: Perennial/K
Year: 2026
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