Stream: Snowball II, ‘Lost in Juarez’

Kevin Bronson on March 28th, 2019

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Jackson Wargo of Snowball II (Photo by Kat Bing)

When we last looked in on Snowball II — not the only band to be named after a character from “The Simpsons,” but surely the best — it was 2017 and mastermind Jackson Wargo had just completed a stretch of releasing three full-length albums in a 12-month span. Almost two years later, Wargo still has a sense of humor and an affection for distortion — the latter coming through loud and intentionally unclear on the new single “Lost in Juarez.”

The song is the second to emerge from the new “Eaton Super 10,” which is out April 12. It finds Snowball II playing both ends of the shoegazing spectrum — noisy and dissonant, My Bloody Valentine-style, on “Lost In Juarez” and leaning toward psychedelic-tinted guitar pop elsewhere. Quiet and pretty morphs into loud and harsh, and back again, and produced by Wargo and mastered by TW Walsh (The Shins, Pedro the Lion), it’s all pretty masterfully done. If you need more sonic reference points, guitar hero Kurt Heasley of Lilys appeared on Snowball II’s 2017 album “Flashes of Quincy” and the band opened for the Telescopes last year in L.A.

Oh, and Annie Hardy (Giant Drag) lends her vocals to background the gorgeous EP opener, “What Pressure?”

In an interview a couple of years ago, Wargo said Snowball II were more shoegaze “recreationists” than revivalists. But this EP is more evidence he’s not just playing around.

||| Stream: “Lost in Juarez”