The music of Oakland's Magic User covers familiar ground. If you listened to stuff like The Grifters in the Nineties, lots of Shadow on the Door is going to hit a sweet spot for you. If you didn't, and you just mourn the dearth of guitar-based indie bands who are not doing shoegaze these days, then the beefy tunes of Magic User are for you too.
Jordan Martich (singer and guitarist), Digger Barrett (drummer), Charles Thomas (guitarist), and Colin McDonald (bassist, backing vocalist) imbue numbers like the fuzzy "Cowboy" with slacker-era energy, enough that this should earn comparisons to Dinosaur Jr. too. That one is a real highlight here, as is the down-tempo "Machine", a track that sounds like Ohio's Connections in a big way. The rough hooks of Midwest groups like Guided By Voices are echoed here in the mid-tempo "Never Better", while the blistering "Mirror" also jumped out at me with some distinction.
Magic User are not re-inventing the wheel here, but their brand of American alt-rock is refreshing in that it recalls so many of the sorts of things I was digging in earlier decades. There's real resilience in this kind of thing, and Magic User are full of vigor and energy in their approach. Even the slower cuts churn with a cool kind of power.
Shadow on the Door by Magic User is out now via Dandy Boy Records.
[Photo by Michael Ippolito]