COVER IMAGE
LP released: Oct 30, 2020

Tracklisting:
1. Curve
2. Clean & Clear
3. Lethargic
4. Jer Bang
5. Daylight
6. Lu Lu
7. Lo & Behold
8. The Sculptor
9. Mutant Being
10. More
11. Hypocrite
12. My Man
13. Frank Says Relapse
14. Known Unknown
DOPE BODY
CRACK A LIGHT (VINYL)
Label: DRAG CITY
Cat No: DC779LP
Barcode: 781484077916
Packaging: LP (100g)

Crack a Light! DOPE BODY are
back on the line with their first album
since 2015-and it's got all the gnarly,
bisected body rock of their great
records from the far side of the teens.
A decade plus from the audacity
of their debut cassette, 20 Pound
Brick, and four years after calling it
quits, Crack a Light is about getting back to essentials-like, first and
foremost, essentially existing....
In 2016, DOPE BODY were fairly
much burnt from seven years of nonstop playing and recording, feeling
as if their four albums had tracked
away from the early days' intentions
of spontaneous weirdness. The band
had formed in the abstract, an art
project designed to provocate by
embodying values that didn't necessarily reflect any deep roots in
their collective mindset. They were
good with this approach for a minute,
but by their final release of the initial
run, KUNK, they were composing
new pieces from leftover parts of
the LIFER sessions, as if trying to
relocate the almost out-of-body state
that they'd been conceived in.
Turns out they just needed a bit of time off-with a bit of
pre-contagion social distancing to boot. Even (or perhaps especially) with a couple of the guys on the west coast and the other
two back east, the energy is again surging out of the DOPE Boys,
as witnessed by the sudden drop of May's online-only quarantine
mixtape Home Body and reinforced by Crack a Light's explosive
and exuberant opening track, "Curve." The refrain "I think I feel
alright" expresses relative optimism on the oft-scorched earth of
DOPE BODY, and it should-with Crack a Light, they've come
all the way around to the stance of their
experimental genesis, while continuing to
evolve the identity that's emerged since
then-all of which bodes well for the future
of rock music!
Essentially a power-trio with singer,
DOPE BODY have traditionally excelled
at projecting monstrously-voiced street music, artfully welded to the
massive space of rock anthems,
hardcore and metallic, hard-rolling
funk, driven by incisively pounding
rhythm and attenuated with guitar
loops and FX. It's 21st century
post-Jane's, neo-emo (uber-hyphenated) punk shit, which in their
case means exquisitely-recorded
surround-sound aggro tempered
with a dispassionate speculative
edge; sudden interludes of digital
static and minimal-techno clicks
and cuts superimposed on otherwise-relentless riffage. Crack a
Light holds it down with a tangibly
thick bottom, a sinewy physicality holding their songic structures
aloft-unlike the more wildly-imagined, impressionistic and ephemeral sound-froth of Home Body-in
a non-stop, all-out assault, crashing rock after rock through glass
houses everywhere in a hail of
ragers: righteous, extravagant and
introspective.
The distance between their
two new expressions-essentially
DOPE BODY in person and DOPE
BODY in the remix chamber-isn't that far. And now that they've
test-flown both approaches in 2020 and realize they feed each
other, the band intend to get more mixtape editions of them coming on a regular basis. Meanwhile, there's the 2.0 version of their
organic rock sound on Crack a Light. That phrase is inter-band
short-hand, a sarcastic response back in the day to dark times on
the road. Evoking the bravado of all-in group spirit to title what's
surely their best album yet after a lengthy hiatus (with the juices
clearly boiling hard enough for them to spit out Home Body on
the fly while waiting for the all-clear to officially restart), DOPE BODY got their groove
back. Throwing caution to the wind, Caring
less about the things that aren't important.
Getting back to basics. Going with your gut.
Being in the moment. Making a guitar sound
like a pig fucking a power outlet. Name your
new age platitude...Crack a Light!

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