Diary
Spiral Bound
KANINE
Having recently read Haruki Murakami’s 2004 novel After Dark, I can’t help but think of a quote from one of its side characters, the manager of a small jazz bar in Tokyo, in relation to Diary’s debut album. “It’s true though: time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,” the bartender says, a truth the Brooklyn-based quintet takes quite seriously on Spiral Bound, which follows a couple of EPs for Kanine Records. If describing the band’s music as “diaristic” would be too on-the-nose, and its touch of surrealism analogous to Murakami’s style a little far-fetched, you could safely say that if every song on the album were a chapter, it could be marked, as in that novel, by a particular time in the wee hours of the morning.
Not that it necessarily moves in a linear fashion. Toward the end of the record, vocalist Kevin Bendis’ narrator could be writing down in a journal or speaking to someone when, on “Spook Rock,” he remarks upon the magnetism of “this time of night,” confessing: “Underneath the stars and the flickering lights / I can remember a chasm / Of hours tossed away.” But Spiral Bound begins by heralding the arrival of the sunrise on “Keep Comin’ Up,” a radiant tune that could supplant any track on The Dandy Warhols/Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary Dig!. As it plunges backward into the night, the record spills over with a sense of nocturnal reverie, the kind that can make nostalgia feel preciously wistful or downright exasperating. Only on the lovestruck “Blue Sunshine” does it seem to step out of the dark, capturing how an underground life might shimmer in the daytime.
It has its moody moments, but this isn’t the kind of debut that coasts on a hazy, enigmatic atmosphere. Aided by co-production from BODEGA’s Ben Hozie, Diary have developed an already-sturdy language of day-to-day moonchasing. Bendis is a versatile singer more than capable of commanding the album’s several astral choruses; Chris Croarkin and Jessica Dye’s guitars are by turns jangly and electrifying, often evocative rather than showy when soloing—sliding through the fretboard as if tracing out the lines between stars in the Southern Cross on “Keep Comin’ Up,” then briefly trembling in the night sky on “Drive It.” Drummer Adam Sachs and bassist Yan Kogan’s rhythm section seems to travel through time, too, adapting to the booming alt-rock of “Living Like a Bat,” the down-to-Earth jangle of “Spin the Bottle,” and the fast-paced pop-punk of “Already Dead” with equal ease.
Oddly enough, the band’s shared vocabulary is as evident as their capacity for growth on the record’s biggest outlier, “In the Tarot.” Placed right in the middle of the tracklist and sandwiched between two significantly more anthemic songs, it trades drums for mechanical percussion and the rhythm of cicadas, and the electric guitar for what I have to assume is a sitar. A subtle, unexpected duet between Dye and Bendis, its lyrics are more cryptographic than descriptive. Like the ghost of the woman the singer can’t manage to get over by the final track, Dye’s voice appears once more on the edges of “Spook Rock,” and you can’t help but miss it when the record’s over. Even if it ends starved for love—and leaves you wanting more—Spiral Bound makes the chasm, in that special way, sound fun and full of possibilities.
