Sometimes an album can make you question your place in the world. Ideally, it’s because Leonard Cohen, in his timeless fashion, has just whispered something both deeply profound and intimate, and yet universally true.
But, alas, not everyone can be Leonard Cohen. Leonard Cohen certainly isn’t Air Traffic Control either, and their newest album, No Horse Kids, is best when applied not to universal truths, but some smaller, far more pointed, subjective truths. Where Plato once asked, “what is good?” we are confronted with two far more treacherous questions: “what is good to me?” and “Good Lord! How long ago was 1994?”
No Horse Kids is, as far as I can tell, is an excellent album. In fact, in my heart, I know it is. It packs a punch with a monstrous sound that leaves my sub aquiver and rarely ever relents. That’s hardly the end of the album’s merits, but a starting point for outlining its defining idiosyncrasies and exactly what is so meritorious about them and in that we realize what it is that makes this album great: it sounds very familiar.
According to Air Traffic Control’s frontman Kirk Comstock, he was aiming for something that sound like the love child of The Clash, Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Oasis and The Queens Of The Stone Age, with a side of The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Tame Impala. As a result, we’ve landed squarely in the mid-’90s with an emphasis on hard rock and a touch of the late-second British invasion. It’s a wonderfully sweet spot to find yourself and arguably the pinnacle of the recording industry, but, at the same time, it comes with a very distinct sound.
Of course, there’s something to be said about a freshly released album that immediately sounds familiar. Some say that this is exactly the formula you want to stumble on for crafting the next biggest hit. However, there’s no way around the fact that it sounds like it belongs to another era. Unlike the sounds of the ’80s—ones that have remarkably resurfaced in the post-Napster landscape in the form of bedroom-produced vaporwave over the last decade—anything that resembles peak ’90s finds itself in the unenviable position of being both behind and ahead of the times.
That is, unless one were prepared to boldly state that the ’90s truly were the high point in music history. It’s not necessarily the hill I would choose to die on, but I’d take a scrape or two.
No Horse Kids clearly excels in that department. The production on it is fantastic; maximizing whatever sorcery is required to reverberate my entire desk like it’s being possessed and for the same reason make headphones honestly seem like a health hazard.
It’s a lot to expect from an album that Comstock stays he wanted to create as a “true three-piece” with a minimalistic approach.
“I only allowed myself one guitar track aside from ‘Sweet Love’ where there are some guitar overdubs,” explains Comstock. “Every other song is a guitar take, vocals, Jordi’s drums and Luke’s bass. I wanted to challenge myself to sing more powerfully and freely like Roger Daltrey but still sound like myself.
“I needed the lyrics of the songs to be real, honest and raw like Muddy Water’s and wanted to lean as far back into the source of as many roots as possible. Blues, rock, folk and punk.”
As an Easter egg, Comstock also says he designed each of the songs to still work if all you had was a campfire and an acoustic guitar, but No Horse Kids is about as far away from a campfire as can be imagined.
The whole album introduces itself with a sweltering instrumental, building itself with that three-piece concept with “Sweet Love.” It’s a bold and unexpected move for a lead-in, but one Comstock is confident wasn’t just the right choice, but the only choice.
“It just felt right and whenever we moved ‘Sweet Love; it didn’t feel as good,” explains Comstock. “We want it to be an experience as a record. I’ve never thought about risk when writing unless I’m not being risky enough to be real.”
The song is just the calm before the storm, however, and whatever hesitation anyone might have can be blown away with “The Climber.” With clipped vocals and a dose of drum and bass, Air Traffic Control launch in with the sort of heavy vibes you’d expect from psych-rock bands Pond or The Black Angels. It’s a groove they’re comfortable with and revisit as they take aim at billionaires with extraterrestrial ambitions on their single “The Rocketeer.”
Big grooves fit prominently into this album, with the self-explanatory “Fly On Free” channelling Led Zeppelin’s “Hat Off (to Roy Harper)” while cranking the lower end to an eleven. The song is another example of Air Traffic Control’s big independence streak, proudly displayed like Oasis had suddenly indulged deeply in slide guitar. Similarly, the band also echoes the sound of the scrapping siblings from across the pond in a big way on both of the album’s closing tracks, “No Danger”, “My Old Friends” and the album’s title track.
“No Horse Town” stands on the album by merit of a major downshift before erupting in a jubilant expression of vocables. It also provides the album’s major theme of going out and fighting for your dreams; they may not be as unrealistic as you’d expect.
“Mindset can cripple you or help you create things the human mind can barely even imagine,” explains Comstock. “There are people with a defeated mindset where they’ve been led to believe they can never have the only horse in town, when in fact they have a unicorn they don’t believe exists.”
If there’s anything that summarizes No Horse Kids it’s the tendency of Air Traffic Control to go big or go home. If you were to measure this album is head bobs per hour you might as well call a chiropractor before you start. It’s feel-good sing-along arena rock. It might be drenched in the sound of the ’90s, but their comeback is an inevitability at this point.
Tour Dates
11.13.21 | Bridgewater, Nova Scotia – The FirkinStein
12.03.21 | Liverpool, Nova Scotia – Hell Bay Brewing