With righteous riffs, thoughtful lyricism, and inspired bass and drum chaos that spills out of our speakers and into the air around us with ease, Blueburst executes a brilliant introduction to their sound in Significance, a nine-song effort out this October. Though it isn’t devoid of chest-beating rock anthems rooted in punk brawn and indie brute force – just the opening trio of “Vanish,” “Executioner’s Song” and “Senseless” definitely deliver as much – Significance is as postmodern as Blueburst could have taken their musicality, and it exhibits the intricacies within their artistic profile far better than anything else has before.
Significance is a persistent record; it doesn’t scorch its way into our hearts with a lot of unnecessary guitar solos, overstated choruses, or beats. It chips away at us verse by verse in a swanky, surreal wallop of guitar distortion that only grows thicker with every track. Some songs like “Bravado” and “Finito” toy with us ever so cautiously only to drag us asunder in their striking vortexes of melody. This is a beast of an LP if I’ve heard one in the last couple of months, and I would say it certainly belongs on your stereo this month.
The lyrics that insert passion into “Amplify Me,” “Come Alive,” and “Kick My Tires” are riddled with an earnestness that isn’t as common in modern pop music as it once was in the past, but they aren’t throwback tracks by any stretch of the imagination. Their arrangements are sublimely surreal in spots, and while realized in equally unusual manners, they have the same textured finish that other songs like “Supernova” and the timeless “Executioner’s Song” do.
Have a Listen to ‘Significance’ by Blueburst
Tonality is of utmost importance to Blueburst, and they make that abundantly clear in Significance, both in the organic sound of their instruments and in the way that they chose to mix all of this material. The songs are well-bonded together, but they could easily be broken up into individual singles and have just as big an impact on Blueburst as they do as an anthological work in this neatly packaged LP. That’s hardly the case for most of the acts in this scene, but then again, nothing about this pairing of Craig Miller and Marty Willson-Piper is average.Blueburst combines influences from post-punk with cutting-edge alternative rock of a modern persuasion in Significance, and the results that they yield are top-shelf, to put it mildly. I’ve been following this band for only a moment, and though I assumed from the pedigree that their debut would be a winner, this record is a solid cut above anything that I could have expected them to release so early on in the game.
Significance is a multifaceted LP that begs for repeat listens, and even though 2024 is likely going to see some of the most influential releases that we’ve seen in the last decade of indie rock, I don’t think it’s too much to say that this record is one of the unequivocal gems of ‘23. Blueburst is hitting that sweet spot here, and from where I sit, they won’t be slowing down anytime soon.
