Salem

Salem Limited Edition 12" Pink Vinyl

Creeper frontman Will Gould has joined forces with Matt Reynolds (Howard’s Alias, Skylar, Drawings) to create new project Salem. First single Destroy Me fires out of the starting blocks in a ferocious rush of punk rock melody and Gould’s distinctive vocals. His words possess the playfully eloquent set-up and punchline lyrical style that’s a big part of classic albums from the likes of Jawbreaker and Alkaline Trio. Elsewhere, Salem’s debut EP captures the life-affirming joy of hearing a live band erupt into a blast of wild, barely controlled energy. Not that it’s a one-trick pony. Opening track Fall Out Of Love hurtles into the kind of towering chorus that Gould first made his name with, Throat is an ominous, ever-escalating alt-rock slowburner, while the frenetic closer Doomed (For Each Other) sprints for the finish line. And as with all good EPs, when the needle clicks off, the natural thing to do is to flip it over and play it again from the start. When Gould was plotting the album – a labyrinthian Rubik’s Cube in which music, narrative and visuals were all indelibly interlinked – he wanted to blow off some steam. So, he called upon his old friend Reynolds to spend a day making music in the way he had done growing up: by rattling through some new songs just for the sheer fun of it, with no pressure and no greater goal in sight. The songs went into the virtual vault. And in an ordinary situation, perhaps that’s where they would’ve stayed. Always eager to keep busy, Salem was one of Will’s projects that came to fruition.