Slaughter Beach, Dog were first introduced to myself after the heartbreak hiatus of frontman Jake Eswalds previous band Modern Baseball. Modern Baseball were an American Midwest-emo band who, from 2012 to 2016, released some of the best reflective, angsty and lyrically compelling music to come from the genre. Although co-founder of the band Brandon Lewkens has appeared to have left the music industry, Jake Eswald set off to continue Slaughter Beach, Dog, a long-time solo side project of his that has since developed into the brilliant, indie rock band I put forward to you today. Their last project, Live At the Cabin, was an emotional folk soundscape; it was comforting to the soul with clear and simple acoustics, so you can imagine my anticipation for Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling. The band’s fifth album was released on the 22nd of September and contained ten new songs for fans to enjoy, opening with two very strong tracks, ‘Surfin’ New Jersey’ and ‘Strange Weather’.
These opening songs are rather musically ambiguous, allowing the record to musically go anywhere from his point forward, but keep within the emo/rock guidelines with a sturdy bassline. There are certainly country and folk influences that are broken with electric bends to give it the lazy rock feel that the band have come to adopt, like on the 2019 album Safe and Also No Fear and its track ‘Black Oak’. ‘Strange Weather’ specifically, is overall just a very classic and simple sound. With jazz-influenced artists like Stephen Sanchez and Laufey in the charts, we are seeing almost a reversion into a more classic sound and simplistic lyrics for our love songs.
Although ‘Strange Weather’ is not a blatant love song, its blend of female and male vocals are so warm and comforting it’s hard not to hear it as loving and tender. We see the band play with genre abundantly on this album, yet the feel of comfort and community is never lost. Speaking on a live stream about his influences for Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, Jake Eswald highlighted Bob Dylan’s Planet Waves record as being a standing point for the album. He spoke of Dylan’s relaxed sound, saying it felt “lived in, comfortable”, a description that could just as equally be applied to this release.
The album, much like the music on Live at the Cabin and tracks like ‘Modern Lay’, listens easily to perspectives on ordinary love and people, Eswald seeing the beauty in the simplicity of normality. ‘Henry’, ‘Bobcat Club’ and ‘Easter’ particularly blend country/indie rock musicality with a love for the seemingly mundane, possibly inspired by one of Eswald’s more recent reads – August 9th Fog by Kathryn Scanlan. This novel, written from a diary that Scanlan found at a yard sale, tells the life story of an old woman from the Midwest; an “artistic representation of this woman’s life”, Eswald said. This inspiration particularly makes sense as to why the record is so reminiscent of The Killers’ 2021 release Pressure Machine, based on frontman Brandon Flowers own childhood in the American West (Utah). Both albums seem to tell very ordinary stories in incredibly and uniquely beautiful ways, the influence of great American music like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen evident in the construction of both records.
As for the best and the could be better tracks, ‘Engine’ is a brilliant writing job. There are consistent cultural references throughout the album to shows and music (like The Sopranos on ‘Engine’) that really encapsulate that small town, ‘nothing much to do’ feel. It’s a rather long track, clocking at around eight minutes, but was released as the single for the album. In an interview with WXPN, Eswald said that the song “feels like an eulogy that never came”, the musician in slight shock that this project has held up for going on ten years now. The ending guitar solo holds dearly the feeling of time, nostalgia, and the knowledge that change is still coming in waves.
‘My Sister in Christ’ is the song that I had the highest hopes for, but it unfortunately comes across as too repetitive and stands out as an anomaly from such an emotionally resonant album. Slaughter Beach, Dog are excellent at creating a comforting and personal tone in their music, whereas this song comes off as a little detached from these overarching themes, but the actual instrumentals are catchy and upbeat (a nice change from the consistent echoing acoustics).
Crying, Laughing, Waving, Smiling, was just that, a range of emotions that could hit hard with anyone. The country musicality mixed with influences of 80’s pop and heavy indie rock undertones,on top of religious and small town imagery. constructed a personal and relatable record. The final tracks left an opening for more music from Slaughter Beach, Dog, and with this being such an easy listen, I hope to possibly hear Jake Eswald’s clever writing skills used with a heavier sound in the future.
7/10