Conduits

This shit ain’t haunting, it’s soaring. Spacious music often gets the “haunting” label. Haunting to me is scary, dark, brooding, evil even. As a child of New Orleans, hauntings are not inspirational, but terrifying. I think haunting and my mind goes out on some Paranormal Activity shit. Conduits aren’t haunting, they aren’t brooding, or depressing, or evil at all. It’s soaring, spacious, like the wide open sky to a bird. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to spread your arms wide and let the diminutive heat of the end of winter sun warm you. There are moments that remind me of dancing around my room and knocking shit off the shelves and dresser on some teen angst faux-rebellious acting out, but for the most part Conduits self-titled album elevates.

I had this album playing in the background as I curled up in my bed in the dark. I wanted to really give my new music the good listen it deserved. While definitely interested and enjoying Conduits offerings, it wasn’t until about the one minute, twenty-nine second mark of Limbs and Leaves that I got it. I sat up. Immediately upon singer Jenna Morrison’s first notes I knew that this record was on another level. Sure they have the shoegaze thing going on, but it was this soaring moment where Morrison makes fucking sure that we aren’t all just staring at our dirty shoelaces. She grabbed me with her voice and threw me off a fucking cliff. Channeling Beth Gibbons, she took my hand and we flew, gravity be damned.

Out of Omaha, Nebraska, Conduits remind me once again that not everything worth anything comes from LA or New York. It’s easy to fall into that mindset when you live in a place like this. We are a bunch of spoiled brats because of the availability of bands, and djs, and festivals. It’s in a place like Omaha, where a real American revolution is going to take place. Conduits feels like though angsty, they’ve channeled that dissatisfaction into something cinematic, with the hopes of catching up everybody not saying, “Like, dude,” or “You talkin’ to me.” We’d be so busy with our thumbs up our butts, or somebody elses, that we’d probably miss a band like Conduits literally soaring about our narcissistic swagged-out fucking heads. I refuse to let that happen. This shit is builds and builds with rhythms and each epic cymbal crash, each solid bassline, each fuzzed out guitar lick emerging from some bubbling sonic stew like a fucking Nebraskan phoenix.

I can’t wait to catch these guys live, and listening to this album makes me feel so happy that I do what I do. It’s a privilege to come across such good music, music that needs a wider audience, needs to be heard, needs to be supported, and bought. So on March 20th, when Conduits hits your laptop, go buy it. When Conduits passes through town with Cursive and Cymbals Eat Guitars, go listen. But whatever you do stop staring at the floor, and let these fuzzy fuckers take you on a journey upward.