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Sep 06, 2018 Web Exclusive By Timothy Michalik

In the five years since Ovlov’s last studio album, 2013’s Am, the Northeastern quartet have developed into a modern cult, mythologizing themselves in the process of embracing their own outsider tendencies. Their latest studio album, Tru, finds Ovlov tinkering with their blend of mellow, escapist fuzz-rock, ditching any flimsy Duster comparisons for a world entirely of their own—melodic but never monotonous, wildly ambitious but never despotic.

Underneath Tru lies songs that are crafted in a dreamlike state, vivid and vaguely familiar, a lost sound entrapped in a couple big muffs and half stacks. The opening burner, “Baby Alligator,” is perhaps Ovlov at their finest, years of their own songwriting tropes trimmed down into five minutes, as if one individual song could embody a band’s entire creative approach. It isn’t until “Spright”—a song found midway throughout Tru—that Ovlov’s energy recedes, cloaking around your ears like a blanket of humidity does to your skin. It’s an easy world to get lost in.

Some of Ovlov’s finest songs to date are found throughout Tru, such as “Fast G” and the closing track “Grab It From the Garden.” “Grab It From the Garden” reveals some of frontman Steve Hartlett’s finest guitar work to date, an ambitious and exploratory six minutes of lugubrious guitars and dismal poetry: “Green stalks; chalk to fill you in/You’re too thin/See-saw; up and down your days you spend/I’m more than you bargained for/A cheap sore/No one spends it on the world you’ve shown.”

Perhaps a world of all-male, guitar-centric bands is slowly slipping away into the back pages of indie rock, and perhaps that’s a good thing. Even so, Ovlov sound refreshed and, in typical Ovlov fashion—again, we’re talking about a band who waited five years to release a new studio album—their sound and energy is wildly unexpected, constantly scratching a guitar-rock itch without becoming a nuisance. Nevertheless, Ovlov’s return is well warranted, if not necessary, then a pleasant surprise, like a visit from an old friend. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait another five years for that feeling. (www.ovlov.bandcamp.com)

Author rating: 8/10