It's a tumultuous world out there, something Portland,
punk band Arctic Flowers know all too well. On their third album, Straight to
the Hunter, they are taking time to address the issues that have plagued them. Many
outlets not traditionally interested in music of the sort that Arctic Flowers
make have taken notice of the LP, but that’s a just reward for a band nearly
ten years into their career. Perhaps the most high profile recognition for
Straight to the Hunter came from NPR, who gave the Portland quartet a (justly)
glowing review, prompting me to wonder how many bands that have self-released
their albums, as Arctic Flowers have done with this new LP, get such an honour.
I think my favourite review from among those just discovering Arctic Flowers is
one that stated, “They remind me of a young AFI.”
And that’s a comparison with which I heartily disagree,
of course. Although Arctic Flowers have accumulated genre tags like
“deathrock,” “gothic rock,” “postpunk,” and other such along the path of their
nearly ten year career, it’s probably best to go into listening to Straight to
the Hunter without these ideas in mind—that is, without any of the
preconceptions that are nowadays loaded into those genre tags. No, Straight to
the Hunter is hewed from older stone, from a solid chunk of good old fashioned
early 80s peace-punk, from a time when “postpunk” still referred to music that
had come directly out of the punk scene (and hence was called postpunk); when
it meant largely guitar-driven bands like early Joy Division (or, more aptly,
Warsaw), Killing Joke, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and bands that would comprise
the early goth-punk milieu, part of which was also counterintuitively called
“positive punk” by some music writers in the early 1980s.
In the past, guitarist and founder Stan Wright
described their music this way: “Our sound is a mix of punk, deathrock, post
punk, and Goth; aggressive but at times danceable and melodic.” And that’s
still an apt way to describe the band, especially on this album. From the
opening, muscular guitar licks on “Hallow Water”, it’s clear the band is
operating at the height of their power. Bassist Lee is absolutely on fire on
the second song, “Glass On Ice,” which serves as the effective title track for
the LP. Stan Wright can play intricate postpunk lines that weave in and out of
Alex’s vocals, but at a moment’s notice these are traded out for blunt power-chord
riffs that bolster the driving force of each track. Every morsel of Straight to
the Hunter’s 11-songs is packed with moody, raw power. One of the highlights of
the LP is “Dreamer,” a cover of the 1981 song of the same name by midwest
hardcore punk band Toxic Reasons. It’s a song that is an impassioned plea for
hope in a world that seems intent on crushing it. And that’s the desperate
spirit that propels the music of Arctic Flowers; hope for peace, and peace of
mind, in a world slowly decaying.