Rugged, swaggering Seattle garage-rock trio Dreamsalon will celebrate the release of their second album, Soft Stab (Sweet Rot/Dragnet Records) Friday, November 21, at the Highline. It's the follow-up to 2013's flinty and instantly catchy Thirteen Nights. Guitarist/vocalist Craig Chambers, bassist Min Yee, and drummer/vocalist Matthew Ford all have excellent histories in an array of crucial underground-rock units, including A Frames, Yves/Son/Ace, Evening Meetings, Factums, and Stranger Genius winners the Intelligence.

"Walkin' Past My Dreams" arrests you from the start with the electric-bass equivalent of Bernard Herrmann's strident string shrieks from Psycho. The song gradually accelerates into an urgent, feral scrapyard rock that threatens to fly right off the Bandcamp template and scorch your noggin. God damn, this kind of recalls A Frames at their most frenzied, and it bodes well for the rest of Soft Stab.

Press release after the cut.

Sweet Rot and Dragnet Records have teamed up for “Soft Stab” the impressive 2nd LP from Seattle’s Dreamsalon. If you’ve been paying attention to the NW rock underground of the past decade or so, you’re likely familiar with the names Min Yee, Matthew Ford and Craig Chambers who have collectively played in bands like Evening Meetings, A Frames, Intelligence, Le Sang Song, Factums, Yves/Son/Ace, etc. and together they’ve crafted a set of songs that will please fans of their earlier work as well as earn them new ones. The nine songs of “Soft Stab” have a little bit more of a sinister edge to them compared to their great debut LP “Thirteen Nights” and this sharpened attack is evident both in the songwriting and the production. All of these songs have the classic, locked-in, repetitive, booming Yee bass lines, paired with Ford’s seemingly-loose-yet-actually-tight distinctive drumming style while Chambers guitar work varies from reverbed-out pick scratching, to wailing feedback, to straight ahead driving punk. 9 songs. 500 copies. Download card included.