Die Alone

Call it fate, call it fortune, call it the all-wise guiding-goddess Hand of Rock ‘n’ Roll, because any way you cut it, Gazebos was meant to be. Ever since the motley quartet of Seattle music-scene lifers came together in 2014, Gazebos has been a shining beacon of the city’s live-music landscape, their performances raucous and cathartic and hilarious, uniting the tribes under a banner of unabashed and unabridged fun. Now — finally! — Gazebos have an album out, their debut for Hardly Art Records, and nobody will be surprised that Die Alone is not the existential bummer the title suggests. Gazebos rages against the forces of post-millennial, pre-midlife anxiety and Die Alone is the soundtrack. Given the band’s collision of interests, Die Alone’s manic diversity makes perfect sense. These songs are patchworks of parts conceived individually as demos and woven together collectively during sessions in guitarist T.V. Coahran’s basement—which is also where the album was recorded on 8-track with Seattle garage-rock guru Kurt Bloch as engineer. No song sounds like another and yet the album sustains a dizzying, alluring vibe. It hits you right from the start: Is that vocalist Shannon Perry singing backwards on opener “Just Get High”? Her vocal delivery is bewitchingly unpredictable, the band stretching the song around her like bubblegum. “I Don’t Wanna Be Here” is the album’s punchiest track, clocking in at two minutes thirty seconds, Perry venting some serious girl-power angst; dig the woozy flange on TV Coahran’s guitar throughout.