Culture
The Laughing Chimes deliver a moodier, darker sophomore album via Slumberland Records
By: Emily Votaw
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – When Spanish label Pretty Olivia Records released The Laughing Chimes’ debut, In This Town, in 2021, international audiences found it remarkable that two teenage brothers from Appalachian Ohio could craft such bright-eyed, sophisticated jangle pop. However, to those familiar with Stuart’s Opera House’s After School Music Program—especially under the guidance of Stuart’s Assistant Director of Arts Education, Adam Remnant— it was obvious that this record could only have been incubated in this particular kind of fertile ground.
That album earned comparisons to some of the most revered names in the indie rock pantheon—The Smiths, early The Cure, and most frequently, early R.E.M. It’s been said many times, but like The Laughing Chimes, R.E.M. was an “Athens-based” group. But, of course, theirs lay in Georgia, surrounded by kudzu, instead of Ohio’s coal country.
Today, The Laughing Chimes release the follow-up to In This Town: Whispers in the Speech Machine (Slumberland Records). This album, just like the group’s first, isn’t one the world outside Appalachia would ever think would come from within it. However, to the keen observer, this batch of moody, sophisticated postpunk songs is exactly the sort of manifestation of the group’s natural creative progression we’d hoped for.
Whispers in the Speech Machine opens with Atrophy, which takes a page from masters-of-the-micro-pop-song Guided By Voices and wastes no time getting into the heart of the matter. Just like that, we’re walking headlong into the climax of a party we were never cool enough to be invited to in the first place – the kind held in a long-abandoned church or maybe a decrepit barn (whatever kind of party that is).
The guitar builds and breaks subtly, creating that specifically “Flying Nun Records” sound, an element the group has been playing with since at least the release of their 2022 Zoo Avenue EP. Instead of posting the jangle up front and center, it’s soaked and stewed in reverb, with the melody bobbing up and down and growing in value and intensity.
Atrophy leads into He Never Finished The Thought, and suddenly, we’re amid Jesus and Mary Chain-style shoegaze fuzz. The noisy, rough edge feels alive – this is an album highlight. Here, The Laughing Chimes aim unapologetically for a confrontational sonic grandness, hitting the mark with flying colors.
Country Eidolism is an experiment in Red House Painters-esque melancholy, not to mention a nod to one of my favorite genres of all time – “horror rock,” since eidolism is, after all, a term for the belief in ghosts. This makes sense – there’s an undeniable “goth” feel to Whispers in the Speech Machine.
Given the age-old goth trope of appearing “spooky” while actually having an ooey-gooey heart of gold, it only makes sense that this record’s moments of atonality and roughness are also its sweetest.