Lo-fi garage buys you time, obscures the glass to avoid scrutiny, gives a cool sheen to an empty vessel. So, when you don’t have that many great songs, you can still get away with it. Just claim it’s all a load of discarded bedroom DIY demos that were recorded in an afternoon between lunch and dinner.

Bowlegs happens to want a little more from music, so the Odonis Odonis debut was initially met with sceptical thoughts. Especially when we read the PR blurb about how album number two is the cleaner, more produced record (it is currently in the pipeline).

The man behind the moniker is Toronto-based Dean Tzenos, and Hollandaze was indeed recorded at home, pretty much as a solo project. It’s an unrelenting, noise-induced fallout of garage and surf guitars – Tzenos’ deadpan delivery mainly lost in the fuzz.

That said, under the cloak of raucous distortion lie a few decent tunes – first up being Busted Lip. Tzenos displays more attitude and expression here – rather than just trying to make as much noise as possible. And Handle Bars drops in some nice guitar refrains, a louder vocal and effective female accompaniment. And finally, on Basic Training, we felt a little more time had been invested. It’s a slower track with a screeching guitar, flying across the cavernous surroundings, where Tzenos revels in his vocal wail.

The beats are programmed, which means the songs can feel a little restricted by the machinery. On the louder tracks they struggle to make a mark at all. And the musician’s voice can feel a little cold – the record’s lo-fi production means he is always submerged by distortion and fuzz. The truth is nothing here is melodically strong enough to transcend the muddied sounds that we are forced to trudge through. That said, we do have a feeling there is a lot more to come from Odonis Odonis, so roll on album number two.

-Brian Bentner-