Oakland, California's Low Praise have an interesting blend of modern indie rock aesthetics and classic 90's Alternative and Indie tidbits. The band definitely is more in the modern indie rock vein although they cite The Fall and Wire as two major influences on their over all 70's post punk sound. The band has just released their debut full length, which was recorded during the pandemic. The band says because of the fact they were forced to find different ways to collaborate remotely which led to experimentation on the new tracks. The new album already sold out on vinyl according to the bandcamp page for the band so fans must be excited and there is good reason why. Listening to other tracks throughout the album it's clear the band isn't a one trick pony as there moments that sound like Talking Heads to Gang Of Four to Pavement. It's a giant mix of many things I personally love. 

Chris Steven's from the band had this to say about the albums lead single "Time is Calling": "This song is about accepting impermanence. Like a lot of folks the past few years (especially), I was riding a wave of anxiety, depression, and uncertainty of what the future was going to be like. At the time I was nearing 40, unemployed due to Covid related layoffs, filled with existential dread, and pondering what I’ve done with my life and what to do with the rest of it. I’d often wake up in the middle of the night with all of these thoughts and try to find a way to calm myself down in order to get a couple of hours of sleep. I already had the phrase “time is calling” in my head, along with the main guitar riff and vocal melody. So, I would just run through lyric ideas based around that until I’d eventually fall asleep. When we all got together to go over the song idea, we ended up fleshing out the basic structure in one night pretty much. It’s just one of those songs that felt strong and we didn’t want to overthink too much." 

It's great ecclectic this album gets. On tracks like "Angela" it's more of a mellow garage rock ballad but done in a very Spoon sounding style. Then the band pivots on the very next track "Supermind" to almost an indie rock version of The Ramones rhythmically. The band definitely has punky overtones like on the song "Hollow Ego" but with more clean guitars that have some jangle to them it pushes the genre tag more towards the indie spectrum and less to the punk label. However the band definitely has some balls to it as ever song is driving and energetic. It's definitely an enjoyable listen. If punky indie rock with lyrical content about existential dread is your thing, you might have just found your new favorite band.