Words: Hugh O’Boyle // “Guitar music is so dead”, so says 99.9% of comments on The Guardian by soon-approaching forty year-old male keyboard warriors who spend their hazy, simply days admiring and grooming their pubescent, handsome facial hair whilst watching DVD box sets of the 1994 Spiderman cartoon series and sulking in their gatherings to favourites - Blur, Beatles and Stone Roses on repeat. We’ve heard it all - not forgetting the most commonly used term of last year: “2011 saw the death of guitar music”. Well, as unbearably painful as it might be, here’s the news: it’s not dead quite yet. // By now you might be wondering: what exactly are we trying to say? Well, granted, if rock enthusiasts spent as much of their time complaining about “noise” these days as they did searching for new blood, they’d know that 2011 was a generous seasoning for guitar bands spreading themselves into the dirt-fuelled media wildfire. Take Vaccines, for example. From primitive enthusiasts to stadium ‘we-don’t-give-a-fuck’ arena sell-outs who unarguably owned the year, they paved the road for success. One band to have tracked that very road is Howler, a four-piece rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Accordingly created out of pure boredom and annoyance at numerous unsustainable projects, their newly released ‘America Give Up’ screams leather jackets, bratty teen lyrics and post-party bed hair. // However, the album may not be the gentle prod “indie” so much needed, but it is neither a saviour, and is flawlessly unoriginal towards rocks historical milieu. Bets on surf-pop and guitar-twangy garage are evident and the same dumb, careless attitude Vaccines derive is inevitable in the listening as 19-year old figurehead Jordan Gatesmith screeches similarly to Julian Casablancas in a sandpapered-esque tone. At times, and especially the Punk vibes of ‘Pythagorean Fearem’ to name one of a few, we’d feel helpless in resisting the temptation to compare it to early ‘Strange House’ Horrors, but alternatively, it is almost impossible not to hear O. Children’s Tobi O’Kandi’s bottomless, unnerving vocals in ‘Back To The Grave’. // Alas! do not get us mistaken - Howler project themselves with a fresh essence of motoric apathy and drivel rarely successfully achieved as their songs offer high energy out-bursts and trashy melodics, “I wanna die young, as a star”, whilst Gatesmith howls for the promise of loving companionship “Where will you be, in 2023? In someone else’s arms?”, implying the significance of the influence their label Rough Trade’s Geoff Travis had on the record. ‘Back Of Your Neck’ boasts a disparate inquest via a rocky country-blues intro and soon relishes into a straight up appregios of ambient guitars, whilst the prominence of ‘This One’s Different’ is exactly as stated, with alluring drum beats and an accelerating guitar edge as though it should soundtrack the ending introspective to an Inbetweeners episode, minus Gatesmith’s slick vocals. All very naive, really, but a great deal of fun. Quite arguably, Howler are not the much anticipated refurbishment of guitar music, rather than a group of guys who hung out in their basements listening to a hell of a lot of – yep, here it finally is - Strokes, whilst occasionally flipping on a Jesus and Mary Chain record on the player and in turn happened to use their time productively to write an exuberant and fleet-footed piece ‘America Give Up’, throughout adding to it a contemporary nonchalance – whilst, back in England, those nifty middle-aged men stayed at home on Sunday afternoons gloomily watching Peter Parker on the television screen instead of reading NME. //