Discover Top Posts Tagged with #captain samurai

It's what I'm used to but I can't get used to missing you Every fucking night I want to cry I want to sink into your arms and have you tell me goodnight That you love me that you love the idea of us I'll wait for you I'll wait for you I'll wait for you I'll wait for you

Captain Samurai - “We’ll be friends forever”

#Captain Samurai #lyrics

#💖#LISTEN TO THIS SONG #WE’LL BE FRIENDS FOREVER #CAPTAIN SAMURAI #LOOK THEM UP

CAPTAIN SAMURAI: TWO YEARS - EP

GLOOMY BUMMER FUZZ - FFO: Cloud Nothings, Hum, Joy Division

In a summer evening sweat of youthful passion and midnight moping Captain Samurai hesitantly dances to a soundtrack from some lost early ‘90s indie flick that’s both noisy and sentimental. What should we have expected from a band called Captain Samurai? Surely not the gloomy sadster rock of the Two Years - EP. Beginning with blissful and shimmering arpeggios, Captain Samurai immediately captures a sense of longing--for meaning, for love, for belonging. There’s a familiarity to the band’s music, a gasping emotional exhaustion that we all feel at some point.

When opening track “1997” finally kicks in (if it can be called a kick in) with Amador Diaz’s barely mumbled “I’m sad without you, but I’m still lonely right next to you, it’s as if he’s dragging himself out of bed, the bass is begging him to get up as the snare tugs the song along. Captain Samurai’s sullen restraint let’s listeners sink into the sadness and feel the mood in ways other basement bands aren’t capable of. But with all the fervor of the Pixies or Nirvana, the chorus collides into the sense of hopelessness, as sparkling as it is snarling. Diaz, to his great credit, manages to maintain the same defeated tone, but the backing vocals scream in exasperation as if supporting him, pushing a friend to move on.

Two Years by Captain Samurai

Looking at a lyric sheet might read like the back page of a high school Brand New fans notebook--full of simplified, poetic lines of desperation and hopelessness. “This isn’t how things are meant to be, maybe happiness isn’t meant for me” sits alongside “I’d rather kiss you then get along, I’d rather be happy than sing these songs” in the opener. At times this works to Captain Samurai’s benefit, effectively portraying the crushing personal weight of relationships and the personal catastrophes that come with their ends. At other moments, it sounds cheap, like sale items from a mega-chain department store specializing in mass-produced emotional trauma.

Not that artists must reveal their personal lives to listeners, but when dealing with heartache and intense emotion details help to bring music from melodramatic to meaningful. For the most part, Captain Samurai spares enough detail for the songs to feel intimate and the stories to feel real, but there’s room for the songwriting to mature. To be fair, not one of the bandmembers is yet 21-years-old, so in many ways the Phoenix natives are ahead of their peers. “Nia” and “Crush” bring in some of those needed details without over-exposing a personal life. After the beautifully bummed opener, Diaz is now wide awake and lets the beat swell quicker though never escaping from his somber, mumbling tone. “Crush” even reaches a lyricless vocal melody hook, a sort of cheering by his friends for more forward progress.

Captain Samurai’s stomping ground is certainly emotional sincerity, but the group’s musical interpretation of the sound is what sets the band apart from trite emo-revival contemporaries. There is an emo sense to the trio’s music, but the guitars shimmer more than they twinkle, and there’s a lo-fi, almost garage rock aesthetic that the often over-processed emo acts rarely achieve. The dreary vocal delivery and dark swagger of the rhythm section even have moments of new wave jubilant gloom akin to Joy Division. Moments like the crescendo of noise in the ending of “Nia” highlight Captain Samurai’s individuality within the sad rock genre.

As the EP ends, Captain Samurai dances into more upbeat territory with vaguely surf rock guitar on “Watcher, Sleeper, Dreamer” (think Wavves, not Dick Dale) and not-so-mumbled singalongs on “Two Years.” Though the titular closing track can fall slightly victim to sadboy one-liner cliches, it offers the accessible exultation that makes that genre so successful. It’s dark, but upbeat. Similar to the great and gloomy ‘80s new wave and post-punk, Captain Samurai gives sad people something they can dance and sing to. —CC

*Download from Bandcamp (it’s currently pay what you want) to get the stunningly somber instrumental bonus track “superghouls - 654 am” which is likely the soundtrack to that movie moment that began this review http://captainsamurai.bandcamp.com/

TOP TRACKS: “1997,” “Nia,” “Two Years”