02.27.2015 — “Breathe Bullets Which Taste Like Pure Fruit” by Jaguwar

Jaguwar

If you only listen to one song today, make it “Breathe Bullets Which Taste Like Pure Fruit” by Jaguwar (2014, from the I EP).

Jaguwar is a shoegaze/noise rock/punk trio from Dresden who formed in 2012. To date, they’ve just released one EP —I— which was released last June. I learned about the band because of that wonderful 30-song shoegaze compilation Revolution: The Shoegaze Revival. I’ve already featured a couple of other bands who came to my attention via that comp, and there will probably be more on the way. I highly recommend the free download. Just click on the link to go to the page where you can name your own price for the download.

Jaguwar very clearly take cues from My Bloody Valentine, and the band name is probably a nod to the Fender Jaguar guitar. That guitar fell out of production in the 1970s when the Stratocaster became very popular. In the 1990s, Kurt Cobain and Kevin Shields were largely responsible for bringing the Jaguar back from the dead and into popularity, and Fender started making new ones again in 1999.

“Muffhead” is the song that appears on the aforementioned compilation. It’s very good, but I think I like this one better.

“Breathe Bullets Which Taste Like Pure Fruit” by Jaguwar

I love the super fuzzy, super delayed, super low-end-ness of this. It’s really heavy and really muddy. Then, when bassist/singer Oyemi Noize starts singing, things get a little weird. Her voice is very nice, but there’s so much reverb and delay, and there’s so much other stuff going on, I’m not even sure that the vocal track isn’t backwards. It kind of has that “warped” sound that you get by running the vocal track backwards. Because of the tremendous wall of sound, I can’t tell whether her vocals are in English. To be honest, I don’t really care.
Also, during the vocal bits, the guitars are less low-endy and everything is a bit brighter.

The instrumental sections get all heavy and grimy again, and it’s a really nice juxtaposition of rough and smooth. Like that sandpaper that’s got course grit on one side of the paper and really fine grit on the other.

Jaguwar makes absolutely no secret of the fact that they love MBV and modeled their sound after MBV. And that’s totally fine with us. If and when they find their own particular voice, they’ll be just as great.

While we wait for a full-length album, you can download the I EP here.