Herzog - Search

I’m a sucker for American college radio rock, and for the most part that’s exactly what the debut album from Nick Tolar’s Herzog delivers. Comparisons to 90s indie darlings such as Weezer, Built To Spill and Pavement are going to be difficult to avoid, but that’s a good thing, right? Well, it would be if he could keep up that standard for the whole record.

The first half certainly has some chops, especially the bombastic guitar of the opening track ‘Silence’. The hometown nostalgia ballad of the second song does slow the pace slightly, but it’s brought right back up with the all out onslaught in the second half of ‘Static Shock’ - Herzog fans must go nuts for when it’s brought out live - then there’s a fine J Mascis impression on ‘Town To Town’ just moments later.

Heading towards the end of the album it seems like Tolar has run out of juice. Instead of jump-around-your-bedroom-indie, what he lays down is closer to countryfied classic rock. He even goes a step further than unplugged with the a cappella number ‘Steady Hands’.

While the songwriting across the album gives it points for quality, some of the lyrics leave a little to be desired. Behind the harmonic US accents are words that could be more creative. Some of the descriptions of slacker suburbia are a bit cringeworthy: ‘The sound of hipsters growing old / We cuddle before we fuck’, and the attempted austerity doesn’t help, with lines like ‘In the war of cool I’m a pacifist’ Tolar comes across as a po-faced pop punk.

It’s interesting that Herzog has already had a split release with Yuck, another band looking back to American guitar bands of the past twenty years for inspiration. Revivals of periods in pop culture come and go, but right now I’d be willing to put Herzog’s name on my hypothetical 90s school bag. Although it wouldn’t take pride of place, it would happily sit next to all those bands that have clearly been such an influence.