The Serfs: Half Eaten By Dogs

Over the history of any creative attempt, there is an element of the watered down and bastardisation from the original source.

While independent music is a wonderful thing, the fact there is so much of it means fewer voices are heard. Post-punk, noise-rock, darkwave. These scenes have a plethora of soundalikes, to the point where it becomes more interesting in investigating where on earth it came from first!

Taking off the cynical hat for a second, and on the flipside, perhaps the cream really does rise to the top, if you have enough patience to stick around? In The Serfs’ case it really does feel that way.

From afar, Cincinnati seems to be a city rife with good underground bands. In my opinion, most smaller cities and regional areas throughout the world tend to have a bit more of a grounded identity that is conducive for exciting artistic endeavors compared to the concrete jungles of New York, Los Angeles and, across the Atlantic, London.

Martin Frawley: The Wannabe

Cincinnati feels like one of those places, and while the experimental guitarist Pete Fosco came to our attention earlier this year, preceding that was Crime of Passing. Three of the band’s members, Dylan McCartney (vocals, percussion, guitar, bass, electronics), Dakota Carlyle (electronics, bass, guitar, vocals) and Andie Luman (vocals, synths) are indeed The Serfs (they also ply their trades in The Drin and Motorbike, respectively).

The band’s rise through the ranks of the underground has been steady, dispatching darkwave-inspired sonics since 2018 with their debut Sounds of Serfdom and last year’s Primal Matter. 12 months on, and The Serfs not only return with their Trouble In Mind debut, but also their game-changing long-player, Half Eaten By Dogs.

An album that expands on their past, Half Eaten By Dogs is so well-rounded with new ideas that it actually go beyond any specific scene or genre, as The Serfs cherry-pick the best parts of many to create something that doesn’t sound like anything else out there.

Take opener, Order Imposing Sentence. Here The Serfs scour the Australian shores for inspiration and what they find down the country’s eastern seaboard is the quirky noise-pop majesty of Blank Realm and the sci-fi-inspired panache of Total Control. It’s not the only time the Brisbane underground legend’s influence echoes throughout these 10 songs. On Beat Me Down and later with The Dice Man Will Become, The Serfs deliver wonderful slabs of synth-pop bliss that bursts with new hope.

With nostalgic bleeps that blind like a flash across broken glass, the grimy darkwave of Cheap Chrome makes substantial gains on the band’s past. So too on Suspension Bridge Collapse, a track that pounces with immediate gusto.

FACS: Still Life In Decay

Spectral Analysis takes the idea of Air’s Sexy Boy and blends it with a narcotic blend of saxophones, creating an atmospheric mist akin to a scene from Stranger Things. In contrast, Club Deuce is a seductive sprawl of coldwave-meets-pop in something that is bound to fill a dancefloor with outliers and miscreants alike. And Electric Like an Eel will clear that very dancefloor. With BPM likened to a caffeine rush and a crescendo of harmonica, it’s a song that sees The Serfs finding new dark portals to enter.

And through that very portal comes Ending of the Stream (“Sometimes you gotta drink the dream”). One of The Serfs the best moments committed to tape so far, the band takes it down a notch, shaking off the synths for a blues-y psychedelic jam that sounds like Jagger fronting Jefferson Airplane! Wonderfully wicked, indeed.

While Mocking with Laughter rounds out Half Eaten By Dogs the way any good album should be finish, it ends a journey that exceeds expectations. While The Serfs have mustered a steady audience from their first two releases, it’s about to go to another level on the back of Half Eaten By Dogs. An album that grows stronger with each listen, it’s also one of great surprises of the year.

Half Eaten By Dogs is out via Trouble In Mind. Purchase from Bandcamp.