If you were to make a Venn diagram of people who are fathers and people who play rock, there would be considerable overlap. And yet, the term “dad rock” has come to be seen as a pejorative. Maybe the haters simply haven’t listened to Outro. (The band performs Friday, Oct. 27, at Click Workspace in Northampton.)
To be fair, the Northampton indie-rock group is not making the kind of music generally associated with dad-rock acts. The fact that all four members of Outro are parents bears mentioning only because they’re all busy with day jobs and families, which adds a layer or two of complexity to the already tricky business of playing music in a band, never mind finding the time to write and record songs. In that sense, the foursome’s new LP, The Current, is a triumph. Outro is exploring right angles and rough edges on eight songs built around big, bristling guitars and hazy vocals. (Full disclosure: I know all four members, to one degree or another — Northampton is a small town, after all.)
Post-punk and shoegaze are clear reference points: precise guitars from Josh Levy and Adam Zucker march along over galloping drums from Noam Schatz on “Alive,” while Peter Sax’s brisk bassline at the start of “Unmoored” sets up a barrage of cacophonous guitars that surge around Levy’s plaintive vocal melody. There’s a psychedelic feel to the lead guitar part that comes swirling through “MitM” like a slow-motion tornado, and Levy and Zucker sing dreamlike harmonies on “The Loss” as a descending four-note guitar lick cuts through the fuzz-tone thicket that blankets the song. Two songs here stretch past six minutes: the first, the title track, has a dynamic feel as it shifts through distinct sections. There’s less movement on the second, “Undertow,” though album closer “The Rough” more than makes up for it one track later with a bright, stinging guitar riff and perhaps Levy’s most pointed lyrics.
Releasing any musical project into what has become a raging torrent of creative content amounts to an act of faith that someone will find it, and connect with it. With The Current, Outro has made the search worthwhile.
Outro performs Friday, Oct. 27, at Click Workspace, 9 1/2 Market St., Northampton. Eleanor Levine opens. Tickets are $15 for the 7 p.m. show.