DARK SPRING by GUILLERMO SEXO

MDRF027 | SEPT 2013 | 53:00 | LIMITED-EDITION VINYL

Dark Spring is the 5th release from the shimmering Boston quartet Guillermo Sexo. Its sprawling collection of 11 songs produced and recorded by Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur JR, Chelsea Light Moving, Thurston Moore, Speedy Ortiz). The songs echo with fuzzed out intensity, dense dreamy mood swings, and psych-pop song craft at it’s best-all elements working together to make it Guillermo Sexo’s most vital, majestic record to date. In Justin Pizzoferrato’s words- “I’ve worked with the band for years, and this record is their best! It covers a lot of ground and has a lot of layers. At it’s core it’s really brilliantly written and performed music.”The 11 tracks on Dark Spring are diverse in style, but retain a cohesion in sound spanning multiple genres- mixing flourishes of shoegaze, 90′s guitar fuzz, dream pop, and psychedelia in their own distinct way. “Meow Metal” and “Dark Spring” are spacey with lush, layered waves of guitar lines washing over Noell Dorsey’s beautiful vocals. “Bring Down Your Arms,” “Echo Out My Call,” and “Fall Lens” give a glimpse at principle song writer Reuben Bettsak’s ability to churn out propelling, unrelenting psych-fuzz hits. “Coyote”is one of the most dynamic and expansive songs the band has written to date, clocking in at around 8 minutes. Noell’s vocals soar over layers of driving guitars, Elliott Anderson’s massive bass and Ryan Connelly’s syncopated rythyms. Dark Spring is a captivating album that “crackles with vitality,” in the words of Clicky Clicky Music Blog.Guillermo Sexo released the 3-song EP, Bring Down Your Arms in January to positive reviews, a sold out release show at TT the Bears, and appearances in two Music Festivals- Together Fest 2013 and Boston Fuzztival 2013. Expect to see them on the road in September following the release of their full length, Dark Spring on Midriff Records.

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“As a follow up to the 2013 January EP, Bring Down Your Arms, Boston indie band, Guillermo Sexo, is set to issue their fifth full length, Dark Spring (Midriff Records), mid-September which features three previously released tracks as well as eight highly anticipated new songs.
This moody, psych rock record successfully ushers in the pending dormant season with wistful sounds and hypnotic rhythms, and is a holistic album for any music enthusiast taking a liking to dream pop bands from Lush to Beach House.
Notable listens off this well-crafted journey of a record include my previous love interest “Echo Out My Call” (9), where singer Noell Dorsey channels her inner celestial Debbie Harry a la Atomic, “Meow Metal”(6), a 7:09-long track containing a three minute instrumental breakdown of garage guitar riffs and distorted synth, followed by 30 seconds of fazing and delay; and the simple and beautiful “Shadowfax” (11) an American Football-esc track that ends the record with the right amount of elegance and repetition to leave the listener hanging for installment number six.
Guillermo Sexo’s Dark Spring is a record of symphonious wavelengths that build an intricate dreamscape as it progresses through an acute spectrum of intensity, track by track. — Bishop & Rook

“In the swelling world of psych rock and atmospheric pop, it's easy to lose track of who is who. Dark Spring (out today via Midriff Records) is the 5th record from Boston's GUILLERMO SEXO, and in many ways it's their finest work to date. This was already a band to know. Dark Spring's 11 diverse songs are a story in restraint. This is a complete record - a lost art in 2013 - and - whether each of this record's songs are a homage to a specific human emotion is a mere fact, a happy accident from the studio or due to some devious effort by it's designers, this is a patchwork quilt that works. Produced and recorded by Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur JR, Chelsea Light Moving, Thurston Moore, Speedy Ortiz) and released on a label that knows how to do underground and fuzz rock, this one isn't one to be taken lightly.
Guillermo Sexo is Reuben Bettsak, Noell Dorsey, Ryan Connelly and Elliott Anderson. The band opens up the salvo doors on Fall Lens, it's full of buzzing guitars and heavy distortion. On Coyote, a late track on the record, the band channels Brian Jonestown Massacre and Deftones before collapsing into post-coital sleep. The rest of the record (to varying degrees) is the band building up, or tearing down, from those two points. And for me, that's where this record works best. Balboa for instance is floating on an emotional plane - out above the cold, wet ground but well below exhilaration. Repetition of notes, harmonic drone and plodding drums all lead us into another state. It's one of the best songs here for sure. The song stays close to pain but never enters it. It flies close to the sun, but never gets so hot that the wax melts off their wings. Pretty brilliant..
Another favorite, Shadowfax, is the record's closer. It's a gorgeous little 'recovery song' after a series of songs that challenge listeners (repeatedly) to both get up and, at the same time, to sit down! Shadowfax is a song written by psych rock kids in a moment of clarity. When Reuben Bettsak talks about opening your eyes and realizing the consequences.. You'll end up seeing what he does. It's a plea for recognition and it's a hope there's promise for tomorrow.” — Ryan’s Smashing Life

”Back In Black is AC/DC's eighth record. Moving Pictures is Rush's ninth. Invisible Touch, whatever you might think of it, is Genesis' SEVENTEENTH record. We list these not because of their massive commercial success, but as evidence that the best acts keep getting better, so long as they have what they need to make it work. And as evidence, we suppose, that there was once something called the record industry, and it sometimes engaged in something called artist development. Those days would seem to be long gone, so we're not sure what it is, exactly, that sustains veteran Boston indie rockers Guillermo Sexo, who release a mesmerizing full-length titled Dark Spring next week. Whatever it is, the quintet's new collection -- its fifth, and first for the venerable Midriff label -- is plainly Guillermo Sexo's magnum opus. It doesn't markedly alter the alchemy that resulted in their fantastic fourth record Secret Wild; instead Dark Spring is simply both bigger and deffer than its predecessor. And with the present ascendancy of Massachusetts indie rock in to the national consciousness, all signs indicate that Guillermo Sexo's time is now.
As did Secret Wild, Dark Spring fully embraces both bewitching, vintage English-styled folk sounds and gigantic, swirling, guitar-pop creations. This year's model, however, benefited from a longer, more thoughtful gestation, as the band told Vanyaland recently. And the results are astonishing. The centerpiece of the collection is the hypnotic and epic exploration "Meow Metal," a seven-minute song stacked with guitars, a prominent synth line, airy vocals and a bash-n-pop rhythm. Perhaps more than any other track, long-time collaborating engineer Justin Pizzoferrato's work here gives listeners the sense that Guillermo Sexo is not just playing their instruments to make the recording, but rather they are using their instruments to play the entire studio space itself. "Meow Metal" leads into the pastoral, serene ballad "Moonlit Sparrows," which in turn points to the bracing anthem "Fall Lens." There is not just stylistic variety among the songs on this record, there's also substantial variance in the length of the compositions across the set. That variance enhances an apparent narrative quality to Dark Spring: it really feels like a journey out of classic literature. That feeling is enhanced by titles such as the Tolkien-referencing, waltz-timed album closer "Shadowfax," but even more so by singer Noell Dorsey's mystical, other-worldly vocal performances and Mr. Bettsak's arrays of guitars that alternately shimmer and lacerate.
Dark Spring is the band's fifth record in seven years, proof that Guillermo Sexo (and specifically guitarist Reuben Bettsak, who issues a steady stream of demos to his Soundcloud and also plays in Future Carnivores, another Boston act) are remarkably prolific. How many Boston indie rock acts have even been around long enough to have written, recorded and released five records? Better question: how many have been good enough to have warranted a catalog five albums deep? We certainly count Guillermo Sexo among that number, particularly in light of this new, next-level effort”. — Jay Breitling, Clicky Clicky

”GUILLERMO SEXO roll up on Fall with a single from a new album. The album is called DARK SPRING, and the song we have here is called “Fall Lens.” On this outing GS fully inhabit a musical space that they have spent time around throughout their existence. Shoegaze, various indie rocks, psychedelia are all part of what this band is. There’s is a merger of these sounds though, no throwback, no re-creation. And Fall is the perfect season for this band to hand a record to you. GUILLERMO SEXO are a bittersweet rock band, not too gloomy, not overly filled with sunshine, but somewhere in the mid, where the occasionally lucky among us are. And to continue this theme behold “Fall Lens” from the soon to be released new album. It actually kind of sounds like some old GUIDED BY VOICES song with better fidelity. The song’s a grower, a pummeling current of shimmering yet also grimy drums and guitar chords. Male and female vocals together waft over this propulsion. A strong first song, that is only one of several approaches that the band takes on their new record. “ — Boston Hassle