Matches Laces – Matches Laces EP
Chronologically speaking, Matches Laces may be a name that’s new to your ears, but a deeper dive will tell you it’s actually the moniker of a Buffalo music scene stalwart. Mike Santillo has been kicking around town for more than a decade as 1/3 of beloved Buffalo-based indie rockers The Tins. Santillo’s desire to combine organic and synthetic sounds has resulted in a batch of eight new songs, affectionately self-titled the Matches Laces EP. Soothing, vintage-sounding synths fill every space on this release – expect lots of rigid arpeggiation and mechanical drum machine percussion being combined into something surprisingly warm and human-sounding.
Matches Laces first strikes a flame with album opener “Didn’t You Lie To Me?” With its pleasing ascending chord progression and Santillo’s falsetto vocals, fans of MGMT, Passion Pit, and Tame Impala will find themselves smitten. Throughout the song, arpeggiated synths twinkle brightly over a simple-but-effective bassline while puffs of gentle percussion poke at your eardrums. At a brisk 2:39, the song comes and goes in a flash – just when you start to feel the meditative indie-psych vibes start to kick in, Santillo fades the song out.
Lead single and album standout “One Day I’ll Be Lying Dead” juxtaposes an upbeat indie backbeat with somber lyrics about passing away. Santillo muses:
One day I’ll be lying down on the grass with my hands up over my dead body
I said not to worry, no, I want to play your heartstrings
How long, how long must this go on?
At five-plus minutes, “One Day” is the album’s longest track, but the hypnotic strum of acoustic guitar and Santillo’s catchy (if morbid) refrain keep the song moving along with a unexpected amount of head-bobbing energy. Around the four-minute mark, Santillo switches gears to an intimate, electric-guitar forward outro. The whirr of a keyboard holds out a high note as Santillo gets out his final thoughts – conceptually, it feels a little bit like what actually dying might be like… In the most profound and complimentary sense, of course.
My personal favorite moment on Matches Laces EP is song seven, “Wait For Tomorrow.” With a hint of Pinback energy, Santillo has layered up the perfect collection of synth tones into a metaphorical onion of a song. 8-bit arpeggios pan back and forth between your right and left ears while warbling synth noise squiggles freely in the aether. Theremin-esque noise carves out its own space here, sounding entirely natural despite its typically otherworldly existence. Santillo even layers his vocal parts here – airy falsetto soars overtop of hooky, bass-forward chants. Sometimes it’s those late-album songs (as opposed to singles) that end up hitting you the hardest – do yourself a favor and stick around for this one.
There’s lots to enjoy here on Matches Laces EP. The boxy and jangly percussive bop of “Wait and See What Happens” and the tambourine-laced “You’ve Got These Compartments” hit more like archetypal synthpop songs… But even the interlude-ish songs here hit pretty hard. The delightfully odd “Sam Droege’s Garden” is an ear-catching piano riff, while in a different, extended life, “Midnight Crowd” could be vying for my album fave. Album closer “Your Bitter Satan” deserves a nod too for it’s whimsical, The Shins-like folksy trot.
Matches Laces EP is out now (August 23rd, 2024) via Admirable Traits Records. Santillo will be playing Saturday, October 19th at Black Dots in support of the new EP with tuesday nite. You can find the album on bandcamp (below), Spotify, and Apple Music. For a helpful amalgamation of all the different ways to support Matches Laces, check out this Linktree link. Finally, for the vinyl aficionados out there, this EP has been pressed to wax – see this link for more info.
Categorised in: Album of the Week
This post was written by Nick Sessanna