***Even as the primary torchbearers for Detroit’s underrepresented pop factions, Deadbeat Beat remain on a path apart. The band has evolved gradually, growing deeper musically and intellectually around a core of immediate songwriting and always landing outside of standard indie rock parameters. This difference and the growth within it are both in full view on From Here to Ohio, the group’s third album and first substantial work since 2020’s How Far. It’s a powerful wave of songs that hit instantaneously, even as the band takes new risks with composition, instrumentation, and the vulnerability of saying more.
The things that have always been great about Deadbeat Beat are still great. Sprouting from a teenage friendship that grew into a musical practice between drummer/vocalist Maria Nuccilli and guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Alex Glendening, the band has long lived in the precarious and holy intersection of garage rock drive and indie pop catchiness. Rounded out by the understated melodic bass playing of Zak Frieling, the songs became their own brand of dualistic excitement; ragged and nervy enough to dance to mindlessly in the basement house show, but never far from the melancholia and neurotic jangle of the most introverted Flying Nun band. Those basic building blocks are still in place here. The guitars are still clean (but not too clean), the rhythms are still snappy and uncluttered, and tight vocal harmonies still beam out like unbroken lines on a freshly repaved highway to somewhere better. Even if heard from a muffled distance, From Here to Ohio would still register unmistakably as Deadbeat Beat.
The album’s construction also marks a shift for the band, moving from the well-prepared but quickly executed sessions of their early releases, through an extended period of basement recordings, to a deeper, more deliberate process this time around at Detroit studio High Bias. The production here is dense but economical, each layer assembled with purpose and precision. While the vocal arrangements for the band have long been informed by classic ‘60s forebears like the Turtles and the Beach Boys, there’s more going on now, with mapped out harmonies taking notes from Balkan polyphonic singing and the large group vocals of the Cowsills. The drums sound enormous, the guitar and synth tones breathe and interact, the psychedelic inclinations that sometimes spun out on earlier albums are tamped into an organized space, and the songs slowly reveal themselves as detailed compositions.
Best of all, these deep changes happen without Deadbeat Beat taking themselves so seriously that they stop having fun. “Peach Sprite” contemplates being past your prime in a time when basic survival seems uncertain, but still sounds like the most joyful anthem societal collapse is going to get. Heavy themes hide in happy songs, showing up directly in the alienated queer perspectives of “Straight Friends” and a weary post-industrial wind that blows through the lyrics of the entire album. Even in these shadows, From Here to Ohio sounds like a party. An emotionally complex, meticulously crafted, anxiety-kissed party, but a party nonetheless. There’s a sense in these songs that the doom is oblique, but the ringing chords and interweaving voices are real, and they’re going to carry us through.
