Self-Evident – Endings

Listening to Endings is like taking a trip back in time of about ten years, back to when bands like the Dismemberment Plan and At the Drive-In were crafting music that was vibrant, utterly confounding, and laden with irony. Self-Evident haven’t quite achieved the same great level of angular songwriting finesse that those Fugazi-informed outfits did, but on the strengths of Nonlocality’s juddering rhythms and sparklingly light interlude, or the densely packed riffery of Everything All at Once, there’s still plenty here to get your ears around.

Even when at their most aggressive, as on Before the Beginning, they still maintain their contorted sense of tunefulness with an off-kilter rhythmic pulse that would likely spell the death of a lesser band, but here seems to fit in place almost perfectly. Though perhaps too discordant for some to grasp, it wields unpredictability as a potent tool. [David Bowes]