Borzoi

Borzoi

A Prayer For War

12xu

***"I've grown weary of calling BORZOI one of the nation's best live bands, not because it isn't 100% true, but because I've long ago stopped making excuses for how their prior recordings failed to capture the full range of their muscularity, their absurdity or nearly boundless level of invention. Thankfully, though, others actually liked those recordings. Of the Austin trio’s 2017 Surrender The Farm EP, The Wire’s Byron Coley called the 7”, 'very thudly' ('slams straight along like a cement truck full of corndogs'), while Yellow Green Red’s Matt Korvette hailed the band’s 'mangy form of post-punky garage-rock, equipped with a nimble heaviness and plenty of dirt under the nails,' On the way-too-long-in-the making, A Prayer For War (expertly recorded by IAN RUNDELL, notable for recent works from Xetas, Spray Paint and Exhalants), I’m happy to confirm Borzoi are exponentially less mangy though improved production values have done nothing to quash the band’s idiosyncrasies. While fellow travelers plunder the early ’90’s Amp Rep catalog and perform spirited mimicry of The Year ____ Broke, Borzoi’s RHYS WOODRUFF (drums/vocals), ZACHARY WOOD (guitar/vocals) and TAYLOR BROWNE (bass) are operating on another level altogether, and if completing a conceptual K.O. like this album hasn’t entirely cured them of self-saboteur moves (ie. blatantly lying about where they’re from— though under the circumstances, can you blame them?), they’ve set an awfully high bar for what any remaining deep thinkers might attempt, lyrically or musically (though truth be told, their fixation with life during wartime is no...

Borzoi

Surrender The Farm

12xu

***"I haven’t seen a better live band than Austin’s BORZOI in the last two years. That I’ve been under house arrest during that stretch should not diminish the importance of that statement. Either way, they've pivoted from a powerful debut 7″ for Austin’s Pau Wau label to a genre-obliterating, pneumatic noisy-as-fuck-all 4 song EP on 12XU this Spring (more Ron Jonnson than Ron Santo, though I sincerely doubt they’re fans of either). catch the trio on tour this May or watch ‘em from the back of the room like a smug, self-satisfied cultural tourist at SXSW this March."