A Country Western have done one of the more curious things an indie rock band on the rise could do with their breakthrough album, Life on the Lawn. At a point in time where so many of their peers — especially those in the Philly scene, including recent splitmates, They Are Gutting a Body of Water — have turned the City of Brotherly Love into a hotbed for shoegaze’s next wave of outside-the-box experimentalists, they’ve instead set themselves apart by cleaning up their act and opting for symmetry. This only comes to their benefit when taking into consideration that most of the traditionalist indie rock landscape nowadays doesn’t really hit in a way that singularly blazes an artists’ own identity out in the pack, burning through aesthetics rather than free-wheeling with substance. Yes, there’s a degree of Pavement worship laid down in A Country Western’s speaker-crackling sidewalks, but it’s a welcome reprieve to hear Derek Henegemihle, Erik Hilbert, Garrett Miades, and Paris Parker crafting their own slanted and enchanted rock world in a balancing act of loud, off-kilter rippers, time sig shifts, beaming keys, and noodling away at noise frictioned between power-pop hooks and sun-tilted melodies. Behind these warm, fuzzy-pedaled headbops, vocalist and guitarist dives headfirst into the many, many stressors coming at us on the daily from all directions, inside and out. Their unassuming sound that’s neither hear nor there on the amperage spectrum makes for a unique view steps away from home.

Recommended: “Great is the Grip of the Hawk”, “Sidewalk”, “How Far”

A Country Western’s Life on the Lawn is available now on Crafted Sounds.