Urban Heat
The Tower
Artoffact Records
The rise of Urban Heat over the past two years has been impossible to ignore. Aided as much if not more by their captivating live sets as their recorded material, the Austin trio feel as though they’re in an entirely different register than they were when their Wellness EP came across our desk roughly this time in 2022. While the strength of the five songs given pre-release boded well for its batting average, the band’s chance to clearly codify the themes, sounds, and energy which are undeniable live on their first proper LP makes the arrival of The Tower a high-stakes affair.
Whether it was savvily built by the band’s touring and release schedule or purely the result of organic word of mouth, the hype for The Tower is quickly paid in full, with its ten tracks covering a broad range of material while simultaneously feeling even shorter than its already tight forty minutes. While Wellness and various singles have been tagged with a range of descriptors, it’s clear from The Tower that the band are genre agnostics, holding to no specific era or sub-style of post-punk or electro. Instead, they place primacy on hooks and Jonathan Horstmann’s vocal charisma and power. That’s not to say The Tower‘s blend of core sounds is underdeveloped – check the savvy nodding darkwave of “Blindfolds And Magic Bullets” or how thrumming programming and half-time breakdowns are woven into opener “Take It To Your Grave” – but the lasting impression of those pieces is their wounded poignancy and fist-pumping anthemics, respectively.
As for the aforementioned singles, the speed, immediacy, and club appeal of “The Right Time Of Night” and “Sanitizer” speak to a good portion of The Tower‘s strengths, but the vulnerability of “Seven Safe Places” represents an equal half of the LP, with gauzy synths and indeterminate but undeniably raw emotion guiding much of the record. “You’ve Got That Edge” splits the difference between the bracing and the tender, using a disarming lope recalling 90s alt-rock to build towards a triumphant chorus with precision (that the titular concept can be read either as sobriety or an understanding of self developed in youth is a parallel to the differing genre perspectives from which the record can be approached).
In our recent interview with the band I raised the issue of “Like This”, a song I saw as representing a quantum leap forward for the band upon its release, not finding its way onto The Tower. Upon reflection, I didn’t think about that (fantastic) song once during my time with The Tower. It’s a fully-realized, tightly-wound wound record which, if not fully capturing the road-built intensity of the band’s live set, is an ideal calling card for them as their ascent looks to continue. Recommended.
