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WHEN HORSES WOULD RUN: It’s a startling debut for the Texan trio as they strive for surf rock, avant-garde post-punk – and everything in-between.

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Being Dead: America’s #1 Sweethearts. Being Dead – Falcon Bitch, Gumball and Ricky Moto – are a trio of brazen musicians ready to stoke the coals and cause a quirky ruckus amongst a grubbing of surf-rock, as they turn their backs on the whole “genre” affair in the world of music. For a better word, their music is wholeheartedly chaotic, a seemingly never-ending stretch abridging the gaps between genres that were first too scared to come into close contact with.

Our first introduction to Being Dead arrives on the heels of the band dropping acid. Mid-trip, they fumble through the dark as both Falcon Bitch and Gumball encase themselves in an array of patterns that was coming from their fingers. One minute, it’s a detachment from the bizarre – Daydream doesn’t stray too far from a dolled-out Beach Boys territory – and the next, we’re eloping in the absurd landscapes of Muriel’s Big Day Off, “Fields of marigolds and reading
Blue skies, white clouds,” it’s a seemingly far more extravagant day off than Ferris Bueller ever had. A lead tyrant that shows off their best quality, Muriel’s Big Day Off is a dissociative identity parade of different colours as we see awash from the shores with the airy “oos” to a dive jazz bar during the interval, a day wrought with fever, “So if you don’t think you have what it takes to join the club of friendship kindness good and fun then M-U-R-I-E-L has no time for you“. Last Living Buffalo is a arty-punk funk fledging of archaic chord stabs and a harmonious rides before it falls into a distorted screech of “YOU KILLED HIM” – again throwing you into the deep undercurrents of post-punk, awash with quirky weirdness as per.

When Horses Would Run is an assembly of caricatures, each one pulling off a mask more bizarre and brazen than the last. The Texan-trio are the very definition of leaving nothing in the tank. Hell, they’ll even throw the tank at you if it’s a spirit matched with the tin pipes, glockenspiels and bongos on the record. Their is a multitude of influence in here that simply cannot be moulded into the lazy answer of “post-punk”. It’s avant-garde, experimental, sure. But it goes above and beyond it just being post-punk.

When you think you’ve worked them all out, a theremin quip is lurked out from the drawer in self-titled When Horses Would Run, like a play on a mid-western run-in with a pronghorn. Holy Team marks a turning point for religion, Falcon Bitch’s ethereal vocals unmatched with whinny synths. Livin’ Easy is a calm down cool-down, a fuzzy electronic escape of dystopian distortion. While end-piece Oklahoma Nova Scotia is undeniably a homage to those old black-and-white TV classics; a candid attempt of pursuing their music to an advert about the old American Dream.

Similaries for these three are drawn from commander commander, a lo-fi indie sauce of divinity, the toasty vocals of Redbud on Sad On The North Side, and the chaotic underside of Black Midi’s instrumental fixtures across the pond and SPRINTS, a group more fine-tuned to the garage punk side of things. Nothing can be a direct correlation to these whimsical artistes, the Crème de la crème of throwing everything into it and seeing what sticks. They’re babies too, with only a 2019 EP to their name – Fame Money Death By Drive By. With a plethora of chemistry in tow, with the musicalities to boot, we can only hope the likes of Being Dead can make music forever.

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With Being Dead’s Falcon Bitch (Juli) and Gumball (Cody), it’s the opposite quandary. They’re so locked into a single persona that you wonder why they haven’t been playing together since grade school. Their debut album, When Horses Would Run (what, they don’t now?)