WASNT WISNT’s debut record, Steel Cut, is a freewheeling blueprint, an always grinning extended jam that that’s able to define a premature band through a hundred different sounds. It calls back the artists that have influenced them as a variety show, processing them with a startling immediacy; “Standing In Waves” alone touches on the angular but indelible guitar weaving of Women, the discreet shoegazing of m b v and the wide-eyed sound of sister band A Sunny Day In Glasgow; you can hear a slither of Bloc Party’s “Like Eating Glass” informing the song’s intro, and a nod to Dustin Wong’s time writing loopy riffs for Ponytail. Steel Cut is, at first glance, a multicoloured collage, seamlessly marrying as many related sounds as possible and creating abstract pop from the metamorphosis.
For all their homage, it’s important to take a step back, to see WASNT WISNT as their own band, and to see Steel Cut for what it is: a road trip noise record. It’s jammy and often directionless, but it also feels euphoric and meandering, a record that forgets basement noise rock and thinks of the car window instead. WASNT WISNT’s best asset is that they aren’t writing songs, but cuts. These tracks push through different rhythms and pass from one suite to another as if they’re just ticking off rolling landscape – check that bait-and-switch drum fill half way through “Standing In Waves”. It’s just one in a record of often wacky and always invigorating twists. Let’s hope these dudes never reach their destination.