A review from Devon Adams of Echocloud AZ Music Culture: If Siouxsie Sioux, Kim Gordon, and Kim Deal had a love child, her name would be Cecila Olea. I first caught her at Long Wong’s last year with her former band, Analog Society, and could easily tell she was developing her on-stage showmanship. Before I had a chance to see them perform again, the party was over. I’m a sucker for female vocalists and have had the opportunities to see some of my favorites like Donita Sparks back in the day (not to mention spending a grip of dough on tickets to see Stevie Nicks later this month), so I naturally gravitate towards female-fronted bands. I’d been hearing about The Echo Bombs since Cecilia announced the band back in February and waited patiently for this EP to drop. Awkward Summer is the sort of album that could make up the noise of life. It’s an album that neither forces you to drop everything to just listen (that album that you can’t do anything else while it’s playing), nor the sort you flip off immediately when your iWhatever shuffles into one of its tracks. Awkward Summer silently slips into your soul and becomes a staple in your daily musical dealings. This says a lot for a freshman album. People like break-up songs. They’re visceral, and we can all relate to them. The guy runs off to join the band leaving the small-town girl behind. The small-town girl leaves for the big city to be shafted by the city boy. The lover wakes up next to an empty pillow. Another lover finds proof of infidelity. It’s all around us. We’ve been there. This is a breakup album like so many, but so what? It doesn’t make the music less energizing, less exciting. A good break-up song is just that–good. Awkward Summer is a good album. Sure there are some problems that perhaps occurred during production, and the recent addition of a live drummer, Michael Regan, will really flesh out the alt-phoenix old-wave garage-punk (the band defines themselves as “Surfy garage-gaze”). The irony is that Awkward Summer emerges as a sound that is simultaneously universal and unique in the growing Phoenix music sound. The pauses in “Putt Off” put me off a bit–I couldn’t help it. But the more I listen, the more endearingly anticipatory her next lines are. The audience hangs on bated pauses as Cecilia is chokingly emotional through the track in spaces like “I wish it was enough // to love // someone”. “Disconnect”, Echo Cloud’s Song of the Week on May 9, 2013, follows “Put Off” on the EP and clearly demonstrates the musicality of this rock trio. This is another breakup number, but “Disconnect” is more about the angry energy turned positive. Eddie’s riffs emerge maniacally like demons from hell battling Cecilia’s power vocals, and I am sure this is a rockgasm on a live stage. You can almost see the sweat splashing onto the crowd from guitar necks and dripping down mic cords onto the writhing audience. “Habits” clearly emerges as the radio single for today’s crowd (both “Habits” and “Disconnect” have been released to radio as singles). This track is simple enough to draw the lay listener to the table but striking enough that a more discerning fan would find him or herself tapping a foot. The beat behind Cecilia’s vocal rhythms demands that the listener returns over and over to that track. This could easily become a summer anthem. And I love when two-thirds of the way in, suddenly Eddie shreds his guitar in an almost unspoken response to the haunting vocals. What’s refreshing about this album is it’s not some angry chick album like Alanis or Ani. Awkward Summer argues that we all screw up. Guys do it. So do girls. It takes two to tango. You can feel the pain of loving and losing in the lyrical stylings but also feel the emotional chords in tracks like “Dream Residue”. There’s a metaphoric dance of emotion through the entire EP. An almost dialogue exists between Eddie and Cecelia that hangs unanswered in the music itself. Damn, “Dark Surf”. Now, there’s a tune. Rips your soul out from the opening notes as Cecilia emphatically sings through a mic effect that adds a certain animalistic virility to her sound. This song explodes out of the gate offering no excuses for its awesomeness. Forget the lyrics, the notes, the musicality of the number. Just close your eyes and wail along with the images of Cecilia whipping her hair through the sounds of fuzz-pop shifting quickly to a goth-mutation beat playfully clawing its way off the stage into the core of everyone within proximity. All good things must come to an end, and “Space Teens” easily bookmarks this EP by smoothly segueing some of Nora’s beats (yes, the band has named their drum machine) into this last number. The Echo Bombs pull in the reins to a slow melodic fuzz that I could imagine being easily performed during the heyday of what we once called Alternative music but quickly mutated into New Wave (whatever the hell either of those terms even mean to us today). Exasperatingly beautiful, this concluding tune roils along like waves crashing against a low rocky shore, pushing against desire while simultaneously retreating back into its own numbness. Sometimes you hear freshman albums with horrid (or very few) lyrics, and while the linguist in me wants highly intricate verses, the sound of this album, with its layering of instruments and vocals, makes up for any places where the lyrics themselves feel sophomoric. An earlier reviewer said Awkward Summer sounds like something from junior high school. Maybe that’s why I like it. While we have lots of local ladies jamming through their bands, this is the band that reminds me of how it was for me to grow up. This is my L7, my Siouxsie and the Banshees, my Belly, my Concrete Blonde. Simply put, to steal a lyric from “Space Teens” and Awkward Summer itself, I’d like to tell The Echo Bomb’s, “my dear you put on hell of a show”. A review from Mitchell Hillman of Up on the Sun at Phoenix New Times & Sound Around Town: Rising from the ashes of The Analog Society, The Echo Bombs appear to have emerged triumphant with an engaging sound that is both unique yet right in line with some growing local trends. In the last year or so there has been a wonderful emerging group of fierce, electrically charged pop/rock bands throughout this scene fronted by amazing women of vision. In my mind The Echo Bombs join the ranks of Zero Zero, Russian Arms and Optics, Therapist, PALMS, The Madera Strand, Factories, Fairy Bones and a few others where a brilliant feminine vision is combined with amazing gutsy music that meets punk head on. It is almost like a revival of the GRRRRL Power movement, but with more keyboards and a better pop sensibility combined with the right touch of new wave quirkiness. The Echo Bombs present a vision a bit more steeped in the shadows of a gothic touch, somehow evoking a darker presentation than their peers (save, perhaps, for Therapist). That being said, songs like the brilliantly catchy “Disconnect” defy that aesthetic as well, showing them off more as fantastic girl punk than anything yes, while “Dark Surf” is filled with hand claps, squeels and comes off as celebratory goth orgasm. It opens with the deadly disco of “Put Off” which is a perfect start for this six song affair, the refrain of “I wish it was enough to love someone” is somewhat haunting, but an insight that simply can’t be denied as pure truth. In the world we live in, it’s often not enough, no matter how much you wish it were. The easy single from the EP, “Disconnect” follows in its wake, nay explodes from the fade out of the opener and it is brilliant every step of the way. For more thoughts on that particular song you can read all about it HERE. The near ballad “Habits” is a stark and minimalist tune that comes off almost a stream of consciousness poem with simple backing about the self-fulfilling prophecies amidst deteriorating relationships. The lyrics are powerful and once more filled with truth, while the bridge is a far out freaking guitar explosion that My Bloody Valentine would be jealous of in any case–brilliant, simple and amazing all at once. “Dream Residue” should perhaps be called “Habits Part Two”, it lays more backdrop and details on the previous songs subject matter–again, the residual damage of a relationship gone wrong, the two songs are paired perfectly here, this time the bridge is a keyboard wonderland, rather than the guitar apocolyptica found on its predecessor. The aforementioned “Dark Surf” follows and all I can imagine is a 60s B-Movie scenario where very pale people are juxtaposed on a very sunny beach–this is brilliant, in a way that’s not been done for many decades, it’s just a fun ride and a great time to be had. Awkward Summer ends with the electroclash hurricane of “Space Teens” that guides the EP out in a brilliant feedback washed wall of noise, as if it could end any other way. For anyone embedded in both the light and darkness found in life and the living of it, the record may stick with you like no other.