PREMIERE: Listen To Aqueduct’s “Try It Now!” From Their Soon-To-Be-Rereleased Debut LP
It’s unclear, when David Terry was breaking away from the guitar-centric indie rock of his band Epperley to scour for cheap synthesizers at the turn of the millennium, if he realized that many in the PNW had the same idea. Isaac Brock and Modest Mouse were in the process of expanding their manic explorations of American expansionism through the novel sheen of Pro Tools. Similarly, even as Ben Gibbard was preparing to break into the mainstream with Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism, he was figuring out how to best split the difference electronically.
Both Gibbard and Brock, it turns out, were fans of what the Oklahoma-born Terry was conjuring, and within a day after he had relocated to Seattle in 2003, he’d find himself opening for Brock’s band and immediately integrated into the city’s indie renaissance. Today, Power Ballads can’t help but harken back to that serendipitous time: unassumingly effective sonics swaddling airtight songwriting.
On July 26th, Aqueduct is reissuing their self-released debut LP on streaming for the first time, allowing more ears than ever to experience it. “Try It Now!,” which is coming out tomorrow (but which you can hear today exclusively on WASH), distills the band’s self-possessed synth rock into a hazy, romantic ballad.
“I built this song around a Casiotone click track and a guitar riff to rival "Beast of Burden,” says Terry on the song’s bedrock, which then somersaults into an electronic drum pattern and a cathartic vocal delivery. “Reflecting back 20 years on my songwriting, this one is a bit of a baby-baby bop; but hey!, I was VERY SURE OF MYSELF IN MY TWENTIES, I say now with zero sarcasm and unconditional love for this absolute jam.”
Twenty-one years later, “Try It Now!,” much like the rest of Power Ballads, oozes the modest charm inherent to so much early 2000s indie music. The track plays like a pop song with the valleys and canyons leveled out, its Low-like black hole of a snare drum shuffling shambolically to the next measure. The elements here develop organically: the bevy of piano notes that enters during the last chorus, the sudden polyrhythms from the drums, the entrance and retreat of that buzzing synth line. Like the beater in the Kids in the Hall skit that the track references, it’s a track running smoothly on its own bizarre logic.
Listen below:
Follow Aqueduct on Bandcamp! Power Ballads is set to be reissued on July 26, 2024.