Tuesday 6/23: Narrow Head—"Night Tryst"
Today, we share our thoughts on "Night Tryst” by the Texas grunge-punk band Narrow Head.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on "Night Tryst” by the Texas grunge-punk band Narrow Head.
Narrow Head—“Night Tryst”
Eli Enis:
Narrow Head’s new track knows exactly what it is and it does a great job at being just that and nothing more. It’s a. . .grunge? Shoegaze? Punk?—OK, it’s a damn great rock song and it fuckin’ wallops. Right off the bat it sinks into a downright salacious groove with the bounce and boogie of a horny trampoline spring. The song is about sex, folks, but my dorky ass is too distracted by the gigantic guitar tones and tremendous, tumbling drums to tune into the naughty lyrics. Narrow Head’s 2016 debut sounded like every Run For Cover Records band from 2013 squished together (Nothing, Title Fight, and Superheaven in particular), but this song really sees them coming into their own. The vocals are classic West Coast grunge but there’s a heaviness to the instrumentation and an immediacy that’s very Southern rock—in the best way possible. I dig this.
Eric Bennett:
If I’m being honest, “Night Tryst” shouldn't work as well as it does for me. I don’t love the mode of all-or-mostly-male rock bands making Nirvana flavored songs about their sex lives, but this song hits some kind of pleasure receptor for me. The drums are enthralling and draw you in as the guitars build higher and higher. Jacob Duarte’s vocals blend pleasantly into the mix and his deadpan feels at home there. There’s something interesting about singing this coldly about a sexual encounter. It leans harder on the legacy of acts like (early) Smashing Pumpkins or Stone Temple Pilots, acts who rode the grunge wave past its inception. They do a great job of embracing the most endearing parts of it and weaving past the corny.