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01. Dead Bandit - Milk
02. Dead Bandit - Weeds
03. Dead Bandit - Glass
04. Dead Bandit - Half Smoked Cigarette
05. Dead Bandit - Miles
06. Dead Bandit - Sheets
07. Dead Bandit - Buttercup
08. Dead Bandit - Pink
09. Dead Bandit - Amer Picon
10. Dead Bandit - The Bug
11. Dead Bandit - Up To Your Waist
12. Dead Bandit - Spidery Ways
13. Dead Bandit - Koyo
14. Dead Bandit - Let The Dog Decide
15. Dead Bandit - Lucien's Bitters
16. Dead Bandit - One Eyed
ARTIST
TITLE
Dead Bandit
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
QUI 017LP QUI 017LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
3/14/2025

Capturing phantom drones behind dusty beats and haunted twangs, Ellis Swan and James Schimpl return for their third album as Dead Bandit. Locked into a musical language unique to their collaboration, the duo once again put listeners out to pasture across broad sonic plains, drums flapping like loose fence panels in the prairie breeze and bass rumbling like distant thunder. True to their previous two records, Swan and Schimpl keep the strung-out guitars at the front of what they do, whether playing a naked, desolate strum or running six strings through disruptive effects processing until they're barely recognizable. But while there are details of disturbance when listening to Dead Bandit's self-titled record up close, the wider impression is a smoother, more direct affair that toys with post-rock complexity and matches it with the emotional weight of melodic simplicity, gentle grooves and conscious arrangements. "Weeds" offsets its languid fuzz guitar with shimmering sustained notes before settling into a patient, heavy-hearted composition charged with heartbreak leads pealing out in the middle distance. By comparison, "Glass" has a smoky, half-hidden backroom quality. Its brushed whisper of a beat, lingering guitar drones and subtle sub bass come on like a dub wise flip of a sad-eyed country ballad. The mood maintains on "Half Smoked Cigarette," which captures the grey sky sullenness of post-punk and reframes it in the seductive isolation of rural America. While there's a thickness to the sound on these most direct of tracks on the album, there's also fragility inherent to the sound world Dead Bandit have been shaping out over these past few years. There's an even clearer direction mapped out in the vintage drum machine pulse of "Koyo," all the better to carry swirling effects treatments and moody melodic figures. Even in these ominous climes there's space for plaintive, endearing hooks which land as the most direct phrases in Dead Bandit's musical lexicon to date. The fundamental sound across this album holds true, but Dead Bandit are never bound to a singular practice. "Lucien's Bitters" strikes up a pronounced drum machine beat which comes on like '90s downtempo, and it feels like a natural vessel for the heavy, shoegaze tinted lament of the guitars. At every turn, Swan and Schimpl prove their affinity for all kinds of approaches, and yet the end product is a deeply cohesive, immediate listen that shows just how clear their creative vision really is.