By Josh Hughes
“I can make this song if I want to” goes the first lyric to Naked Giants’ debut album SLUFF.
The line comes from the track “Dead/Alien,” which reads like an unhinged punk song hyped up on sugar. It’s an apt opening to a record filled with playful melodies and aggressive arrangements.
Naked Giants strike a delicate balance between goofy fun and blunt profundity.
They will be performing this Friday, both in station at KUGS and later that night at the Wild Buffalo alongside Car Seat Headrest.
Hailing from Seattle, Naked Giants consists of Gianni Aiello, Grant Mullen and Henry LaVallee. While each member maintains a semi-regular position in the band, all three members sing, and both Aiello and Mullen play guitar on the band’s record.
Looking at the credits to SLUFF, there’s such instrumental variety as the bellzouki (a unique, bizarre guitar from the ‘60s) and the waterphone (which is made of an inharmonic steel resonator bowl). There’s also additional percussion and organ, but listening to the record, Naked Giants sound like your normal rock.
However, normal only goes so far as to describe the band’s instrumentation.Their songwriting,is anything but ordinary. There’s a quirky jubilance that the band maintains throughout every song that manifests itself in curious ways. There’s the spoken-sung breakdown of “Slow Dance It”, the absurd synth wobbles of “Slide”, and the deadpan singalong chorus to “We’re Alone”.
For a band that’s been categorized as “punk”, there’s a lot of vibrancy and experimentation that seldom occurs in the genre in the 21st century.
To get a better grasp on the trio’s ideology as a band, it can be helpful to examine exactly what they define SLUFF as. While it’s both an album and a song, it also means the black mush that accumulates on shoes in the winter snow. Perhaps more interestingly, it’s also an acronym for South Lake Union Fuck Face, which is apparently a jab at all those darn techies infiltrating Seattle. The more you know.
Whatever SLUFF may really mean, there’s truly no better word for the jaunty eclecticism that is Naked Giants. Hell, they have a song called “Dat Boi” on the back half of their album, and it’s one of the brightest moments on the record. Not many bands could pull a stunt like that without coming off as at least slightly corny.
Naked Giants are currently embarking on a tour of the U.S. and Europe, playing shows with Car Seat Headrest. Their performance at KUGS will occur this Friday, and their show at the Wild Buffalo will start at 9 p.m. Tickets are unfortunately already sold out, so be sure to catch their set on KUGS at 3 p.m. on Friday.