If you’re looking for lean, high-octane rock that also manages to maintain the electricity of something you might just stumble upon at a bar’s open mic night, then you’re in luck: the Knoxville-based group Necktie Social has emerged with their first EP after a brief run of singles in 2022. There is not a single moment of this project that will bore you, and while some might find it 23-minute runtime disappointingly short, its lack of filler content serves as an excellent sign for the quality of the more expansive projects that are sure to follow down the line.
The EP opens with “Devil’s Backbone,” and while the distorted guitar tones that start the song were intriguing, we then move into something more traditional and somewhat akin to Southern rock bands of years past like Lynyrd Skynyrd. An omnipresent crash cymbal follows the listener through the track as potent rhythm guitar envelops the listener, and we understand what we are in for.
Meanwhile, the next song, titled “Lost My Soul In Georgia,” carries a similar sound as the one preceding it (particularly the steady drum patterns), but building into something more complex. The lyrics follow a man rattled by a breakup, his partner leaving him blindsided and alone. We get vivid imagery of a lost man still grappling with the shock and hurt of the situation; the line “I’m chasing whiskey and the bottle’s gonna lose” was a particularly fun turn of phrase. But after sitting with this morose feeling throughout the first two verses, the chorus offers the line “I guess you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone,” implying that the narrator was not fully appreciative of the relationship he had. The verses make the breakup feel so sudden and nonsensical, but this lyric suggests he is not very reliable as our narrator. that there were issues and signs well in advance to which he was simply inattentive. The song follows the mourning of a relationship, but the listener is encouraged to make up their own mind.
Following a similar thematic tone, it’s followed by “Red Wine Haze,” a song even more directly about a bender. Most of the track stays reverent to the blues scale, only straying when necessary, and this calls to mind classic blues traditions of playing music to lament emotional and abstract hurt. The song is not about anything more specific than driving drunk (at least, not anything the listener is privy to), but it shows us a pained man all the same as he sings of his struggle to cope.
It’s hard to include even one guitar solo and make it outright good and not too imitative of older acts, but Necktie Social manages to include a solo on three of these six songs in a way that still feels earned. Every member of this band did a great job, but it’s guitarist Joey Torres who especially deserves praise. Each time he’s given the space to fully let it rip, be it on “Lost My Soul In Georgia,” “Red Wine Haze,” or on the fifth track “Till The Knife Drops,” he delivers something truly ripe with technical skill.
And while energy is very much brought to these songs, the band also knows to occasionally calm things down slightly to create a comfortable sort of contrast. There’s even a spot on “Walk On Water” where the instrumental entirely cuts out for a moment, catching the ear before returning right back to normal. It’s not always that extreme, though, with another example being the instrumental break on “Till The Knife Drops.” These types of breaks appear on other tracks as well, but this one is decidedly calmer and feels like a chance to breathe before the final track begins.
But the outro, titled “Hello Or Goodbye,” is a much brighter tone compared to the outright aggressive attitudes and vagabond-ish sentiment we’ve seen thus far. It features serene backup vocals at times, but it’s defining trait is its lyrics. While it deals with the same heartbreak as the songs that appeared earlier on the project, it carries a wistful and bittersweet flavor of optimism as the singer declares “I’ll roll baby, roll baby, roll.” The hurt that defined this EP, that prompted the red wine haze, is still present, but he is ready to move on.
Written by Oren Schube
