Dead Sara, Happy Accident, Rare Pleasure, By Peter Dysart

Happy accidents are a rare pleasure in music. However your marginal propensity of discovering a good new band are roughly multiplied by a factor of 100 when you attend a major music event like SXSW. So luck was running high when my colleague Mike Hughes and I were midway through a solid week of bands at this year’s SX. Based on the fevered recommendation of a stranger Mike met somewhere the day before, we popped into Buffalo Billiards for an early afternoon set. Our reward was Dead Sara.

Standing at the front of the stage, we watched the gear roll up and get set up: bass, drums, guitars, and nothing to expect but the ordinary rock band. We even asked a mousy haired girl setting up some gear if this was Dead Sara. “Yup,” she responded, but little did we know that was the band’s front woman, Emily Armstrong.

What happened next is still a bit of a fuzzy memory for me. I recall a pulsating explosion of loudness and raw energy that lashed out at us. Full-throated screams mixed with a clarion alto voice, hip gyrations and swinging arms, power chords and sweat all emanated from Emily, as her performance hit us with shockwave force. After just a single song, she was dripping with sweat and looking for a place to trash her ill-tuned guitar. Before the set was complete, she attempted mid-air splits off a tall monitor stack, leapfrogged into the crowd using my head, and slam danced with fans. After the set, we found her slumpt over in a hallway, dripping wet and spent. We thanked her for the performance, and she politely waved and apologised for using my head as a pogo stick.

That’s Emily Armstrong and Dead Sara in snap shot. Dead Sara is perhaps more of a conventional rock act, but leaving the description there would be selling this band far short. Raw, loud, and unadorned, this LA-based band is the very best of the current hard rocking acts, delivering massive hook filled sounds and blistering crescendos that immediately leave you wanting to hear more.

Emily is Dead Sara’s power plant, funneling her passion, soul, ferocity and heat through a vocal tone that’s ever slightly reminiscent of Melissa Etheridge — that is if Melissa were repeatedly dosed with epinephrine before every song. I give this comparison only as a compass and as a place to start on Emily’s vocal range. From here she takes us on a rock and roll adventure from sweet, raspy crooning to full-throated soulful deliverance punctuated by primal emotive screams.

Dead Sara’s debut and self-titled album is a perhaps one of most solid end-to-end rock releases of 2012. “Whispers and Ashes,” the opening cut, quickly sets the pace with hard hitting over-driven and fuzzy guitars, thumping bass, and deep toms and slightly loose snare holding the beat. It’s a wonderful rock composition that carries a strong sense of urgency and sets your expectations for the rest of the album.

The inspiration for the band name and Emily’s stage name apparently originate from a famous unsolved British murder involving the gruesome beating of Emily Armstrong at a dry cleaner on St John’s Wood High Street in 1949. Other than this interesting tidbit, I found little connection between this and the songs on the album. That leaves us with the music on the album, which is a rich diversity of rock sounds and genres and it’s what holds my interest for the better part of an hour.

It’s an album that delivers for nearly any rock fan, serving up an infusion of rock styles from punky garage to fierce alt metal to southern rock and pop rock. Driving all of this sonic variation is Dead Sara’s guitarist Siouxsie Medley, whose dynamic guitar matches Emily’s aggressive vocalizations, launching salvo after salvo of riff laden explosions that clear the way for Emily to charge ahead. Rounding out this four-piece ensemble are bassist Chris Null and drummer Sean Friday, both of whom contribute to this band’s very tight high-octane performance.

An immediate highlight of this first effort is the absolutely brilliant Weatherman, a true full-on heart pounding experience that’s reminiscent enough of the opening riff of Rage Against the Machine’s “Wake Up” to give you some sonic bearings. “Dear Love” reveals a softer side of Emily’s voice, beautifully combining a mixture of rock ballad and soulful southern rock before ripping us apart on Monumental Holiday.

A few other standout tracks include the hard-hitting “Test My Patience,” the southern blues infused rock of “Timed Blues,” and “Sorry For It All” that wraps up this solid album. Dead Sara is produced by Noah Shain of Skrillex and Atreyu fame and his audible fingerprints are very slight, which is perhaps for the best considering the incredible energy driving this album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttjx2WNrWTc

I don’t often recommend hard-hitting rock acts like Dead Sara, but I really must give a knowing nod to this band and its debut album. Dead Sara is a full on heart-pounding attack at times, but ever passionate and soulful. My guess is that you’ll be hearing much more from Dead Sara in the immediate future. The band will be touring the states all summer as part of the Vans Warped Tour. A European tour can’t be far behind that. Just don’t forget your hearing protection.

– Peter Dysart