Guitar’s We’re Headed To The Lake is a scruffy album. Coming from me that’s a compliment, by the way. As a slacker rock band in the vein of Pavement etc. this kind of scruffiness is kind of the point. But Guitar does pull enough from the various corners of the genre umbrella to not be just another slacker record – especially when the tag is used more to describe Mac Demarco-inspired bedroom pop than it is the likes of 90s indie rock nowadays (this isn’t my old man yells at cloud moment, I like both). It’s the latter that We’re Headed To The Lake is reminiscent of, veering as close to Weezer as it does Guided By Voices. There are hints of shoegaze-adjacent noise pop too, though it’s more of an overall scuzziness than it is a consuming wall of haze. There’s even a left field hardcore breakdown. My kind of record.
Opener ‘A+ for the Rotting Team’ kicks the record off with a build-up below lofi vocals before a janky riff jolts the song into a consistent rhythm. Its casual march is a genre staple, and it’s exactly the kind of lazy (but not lazily written) power pop that I’m all over. The imperfect vocals just cement it as a loser anthem, the kind of thing you can imagine the characters from Clerks or Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show listening to.
David Berman once said “all my favourite singers couldn’t sing” on Silver Jews’ ‘We Are Real’ (another band in the slacker rock canon) and it’s almost a mission statement for the genre. J Mascis, Stephen Malkmus and Berman himself weren’t exactly Freddie Mercury or Robert Plant. It’s probably the reason that I like them, because I’m not a fan of either Queen or Led Zep. This is my rambling roundabout way of saying that this album follows suit by having wonky vocals that give the record charm. The delivery and vocal melodies here could almost lend We’re Headed To The Lake to being a midwest emo fan’s first slacker rock album. There’s crossover between the two genres like the bleed between late teenager and early twenties, with this record having a couple riffs that aren’t a million miles away from the first American Football LP – ‘Chance To Win’ being a good example. The switch up of vocalist on that track is nice too, and adds some nice dynamics to the album.
‘Every Day Without Fail’ is the track with the funny aping of a hardcore breakdown at the end. The track’s sudden transition from scratchy indie rock to a short breakdown feels like the kind of joke my mates and I would make when jamming, it’s infectiously fun. It’s followed by ‘Office Clots’, one of the albums forays into acoustic territory, backed with a placid synth. Moments like this and the strings at the end of ‘Chance to Win’ show the record as not being a one trick pony.
We’re Headed To The Lake is a good time. It manages to feel nostalgic and current at the same time, feeling lost in flux between looking back and being stuck in the now. I’m 22 and working a part time bar job, my fingers smelling like the pennies in the till and a cig I tapped off a mate about an hour ago largely just for 2 minutes away from behind the bar and that’s what this album feels like to me. A scuffed snapshot of a point in life that’s scrappy, frayed at the seams and in limbo. Whilst it might not make any genre classics lists any time soon, it’s a weirdly comforting listen in a genre I have a lot of affection for.
Guitar: We’re Headed To The Lake – Out 10 October 2025 (Julia’s War Recordings)
