SAVAK: Flavors of Paradise

“At a cost we believe everything that we know / For a price we can sell it all even our soul”, sings SAVAK’s Michael Jaworski during the melodic sway of Living Will. Gently pulling the curtains open to a new world where the extremities are seemingly the new normal, on their latest offering, Flavors of Paradise, SAVAK paint a slightly different picture than the album’s title suggests.

The Brooklyn outfit, formed in 2015 by vocalists/ guitarists Sohrab Habibion and Jaworski (The Cops, Virgin Islands) alongside drummer, Matt Schulz (Holy Fuck, Enon), have never not asked the right questions. It’s not the first time a band of SAVAK’s generation have used the new world as a source of inspiration, however unlike many their contemporaries, they provide the sort of message music that provokes thought rather than hits you with partisan belligerence.

Alongside probing questions comes a cult-like sound that occupies the space between the anthemic bar rock of The Hold Steady and the blues-laden, scuzzed-out surf rock mastered by Hot Snakes. It makes for Flavors of Paradise being SAVAK’s best moment captured between the studio walls.

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And while the album is largely dedicated to the late Hot Snakes leader and Habibion’s former Obits bandmate Rick Froberg, from the opening note of Up with the Sun there’s an assured nod in the great man’s direction. Coupled with a rollicking jangle echo, Up with the Sun sets out the stalls, as Let the Sunlight In follows – a chugging, road-trip rocker built for summer and open roads.

SAVAK have never been afraid to use their record collections as direct influences and on Paid Difference, the ghosts of Devo and The Fall play as a backdrop to themes of desire to change and burning egos on the flames. Meanwhile, The New New Age shifts from D and F to M where the proto-punk blur of Mission of Burma awaits. Thematically, Habibion nails it with something that mirrors Dave Eggers’ The Every (“We look at the research and your habits”).

So too on Leash Biter, as SAVAK look into the cracked mirror of the modern age (“Dogs on every corner / Barking in their phones / Never give a straight answer / And they won’t leave me alone”). Two Lamps is another spark from that same fire, inspired by online feuds that play out where both camps proceed to tear each other limb from limb. 

And later during Happens to You, Jaworski pieces together the same cracked mirror with the simple question: “Do you think the problem might be you?”. It’s a poignant moment on Flavors of Paradise, and if more people asked themselves that same question, perhaps real progress would be made.

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Sonically, the backend of Flavors of Paradise sees SAVAK up the ante. The floaty dream-rock of Will Get Fooled Again sees the band gaining new ground, and it will serve them well in the future. Then there’s the beautiful curtain call in Attribution. Arguably, the best song the band has written, this sing-speak-led moment explodes with wholesome melodies that open up a chasm containing new emotional depth.

SAVAK ask tough and honest questions throughout Flavors of Paradise, and perhaps the toughest is posed on Attribution: “I come to you, and I ask you to please be human”. In a world where people crave attention, instant gratification and justification at all costs, we’ve lost sight of the fundamental aspects that underpin society. Respect, humility, kindness; the things that should be default positions wherever one lives. Attribution feeds into that, and by asking these questions, while SAVAK are wading through the same mire like all of us, on Flavors of Paradise they seem closer to finding that core, inner peace than most people.

Flavors of Paradise is out now via Peculiar Works Music / Ernest Jenning Record Co. Purchase from Bandcamp.