Photo by Tanner Lemoine

It would not be wrong to say that Sprain honor the influence of Unwound, a kindred luminary in the kind of art house post-hardcore which the Los Angeles band professed on their 2020 debut full-length, As Lost Through Collision. More than most devotionals to the Unwound cult, Sprain gets it: Building tension, maximizing quiet space through spoken prose and friction, and rupturing that space apart in asymmetrical structure. “Man Proposes, God Disposes”, the lead single and opening track from the four-piece of guitarist and vocalist Alex Kent, bassist April Gerloff, guitarist Sylvie Simmons, and their newest member, percussionist Clint Dodson’s sophomore follow-up, The Lamb As Effigy or Three Hundred And Fifty XOXOXOS For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine, is the product of all the years of continuing to mine that sound since 2020, and one that meets the moment of what a band like Unwound eventually aspired to become as their own insular behemoth in creating noisy art rock with no framework. No gods and no masters for that matter, though Kent’s verbose dialogue under the veil of something omniscient provides the listen with its grim, sardonic sprawl on society from the moment its foreshadowing symphony breaks into two halves – the first, anxious existentialism in crisis, and its second, a subsequent losing of any semblance of control through start-stop, barbed spiraling. “All my thoughts, every one / And through this I admire the farce of control / And my total lack of wind, ship, sails, and oar / Every grip sustained on tangible artifact / Is an amusing thought and nothing more,” he realizes. Sprain couldn’t have written a better cosmic joke.

Sprain’s The Lamb As Effigy or Three Hundred And Fifty XOXOXOS For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine will be released September 1st on The Flenser.