Jade Vases

Drawn from a junk drawer of mangled signals and minor tragedies, Silver Dots, the debut EP from Denver’s Jade Vases – Stephen Anderson (vocals, guitar), Ryan Servis (vocals, keys), Jake Moss, (vocals, guitar), Matt Hedgpeth (bass), and Lucas Huffman (drums) – is a meditation on ambiguity, asking the kind of questions that only lead to further introspection. Silver Dots, released October 19th, 2018 on Really Very Recordings, sets and strikes moody scenes of forlorn carousels, their porcelain horse riders just beyond arm’s length, and of hastily smoked cigarettes in moonlit piles on the cool concrete of airport viewing lots. Cozied around heedlessly buoyant twin guitar lines, the existential pang softens, swept up in the current of everyday anxieties. Captured between the muffled steps of feet above in a cinderblock basement and the buffeted roars of passing ambulances in a lofted living room, the whip-crack song cycle, cheekily self-described as “two-car garage rock,” is a product of patience and intimate intention. Moss’ guitar atmospherics winnow to the tight rhythms laid by founding member Joey Chance (The Oh Hellos), with Hedgpeth’s low-end picking in rumbling lockstep. The table carefully set, Anderson and Servis abide the pass-the-mic ethos of their forebears The Band and Dr. Dog, alternately exhaling explorations of uncertainty, alienation, and the agony and ecstasy of loving another from inches or miles away. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545}