Album Review: Afterimage – Faces to Hide

“Post-punk” is one of those labels – epithets, one might even say – created by music journalist to describe a type of music, but ultimately (as some or other playwright once said) signifying nothing. Tasked with defining it, I might suggest that post-punk is music informed by the punk ethos and movement, but placing a greater emphasis on melody.

That, as it happens, is a fine way to sum up Afterimage, a Los Angeles-based group of the 1980s that features a sound owing much to the darker and moodier music of bands like Psychedelic Furs but with a sensibility informed at least in part by domestic bands like the Gun Club. Where the music sounds a bit like early Echo and the Bunnymen (with sax from that first Furs LP, the vocals are strongly reminiscent of – of all people – Dave Faulkner of the Hoodoo Gurus.

One could – and often does – do much, much worse than make music that reminds a listener of those bands. On Faces to Hide, Afterimage get the texture and tone just right. The music is complex enough to delight close listeners, straightforward enough to satisfy those who came to dance. The tricky pitter-patter drum pattern of “Afterimage” (the band’s theme song?) contrast nicely with the hypnotic and trebly bass work and the moody spoken-word midsection. They veer a bit too close to the Psychedelic Furs on the verses of “Relapse,” a near copy of “We Love You.” But the chorus takes things somewhere else, so all’s fair enough.

This new collection – two vinyl LPs or a single CD – collects the entirety of the output form the early lineup of the band. That lineup didn’t last long, and they never broke through in any meaningful way. A spin of Faces to Hide will leave you wondering why. And the reliably exquisite (albeit idiosyncratic) packaging for which Independent Project Records has come to be known is very much a part of this new release as well.