Towards the end of August 2017, firsthand experience taught me that it’s about an eight-hour drive from West Orange, NJ to Bangor, ME. The first three of those hours were spent staring out the window, watching the trees pass while listening to metamorphic rock band Boyscott’s album Goose Bumps. If someone ever wondered what it would be like to convert a New England road trip experience into music, they would find their answer in Goose Bumps.
Prior to downloading the album, I had only heard an approximate ten seconds of the song “Marco Polo” at the end of a short film, Something Sweet 🍊, by YouTuber LaMadelynn. I was in search of new music to listen to on the way up to Maine and those fated ten seconds convinced me enough to search ‘Boyscott’ on Apple Music and download their album for the road trip. What I found was an experience that was a cross between enjoyable and mind-numbing, like most eight-hour scenic car rides.
Boyscott is a four member band fronted by vocalist and guitarist Scott Hermo, drummer John Lewandowsk, keyboardist and vocalist Ellen McGirk, and bassist Noah Miller. They’re signed to Pizza Tape Records and are based in/stretched across Nashville, TN and Montclair, NJ. Their associated music genres range from pop to alternative to surf rock to metamorphic rock, of which the latter two are key in accurately describing Goose Bumps, released in 2015.
Muted vocals and repetitive riffs that vary per song temporally suspends the album as a whole – listeners are immersed in a distorted space akin to that of a long highway where they’ve only seen tall trees and the occasional river for six hours, and really need to stretch their legs. But when they do take a break to stretch their legs, they’re ready to get back on the road and keep driving.
Goose Bumps is a sonorous mesh of the organic sounds of the guitar and percussion and of the versatility of the synth. “Sleepwalk”, the first track, sets a dreamlike for the rest of the album, despite lyrics that say “but it wasn’t a dream”. “Blonde Blood” is where the surf rock comes in and suddenly you find yourself walking along a West Coast boardwalk flanked by palm trees. We find our road trip anthem with “Nova Scotia 500” and in which both the West and East Coast meet. It’s a gradual return to New England as the road trip extends to a sleepaway camp experience with evocative song titles such as “Sinking Down”, “RIP Sophie Moore”, “Killer Whale”, “Lake House”, “Embarrassingly Enough”, and “Sleepaway”.
While on the way to and in Maine, I only listened to this album in the car en route to Acadia National Park or back to my hotel in Bangor. In tandem with the dissociative nature of sitting in a car for long periods of time and actually being on vacation, Goose Bumps acts as a break from reality. As I looped these songs for hours on end, I could never tell when I was back at the beginning, but I never thought that was a bad thing. The album is intermittently a cacophonic and trancelike blend of music similar in nature to the dreamlike, temporary state of being on vacation or on road trip in New England – with a song called “Nova Scotia 500”, how could it not?
Perhaps the influence of my own trip to New England is why I might consider Goose Bumps able to perfectly transcribe the road trip experience. I had briefly worried that such a remark would be too biased or polarizing or abstract. But a quick trip to the Boyscott’s BandCamp page proved to be fruitful as I discovered that I was not alone in thinking so.
If you like long trips in the car and listening to music while watching the sunset, it’s possible that you’ll like Boyscott’s Goose Bumps too.
Get to know the band better (like I did!) through Baewatch and Melted Magazine.
non harmonique 