Much like the climate of his native Arizona during the summer of its formation, the bedroom shoegaze of Sutcliffe Catering Co. is almost oppressively balmy. Some of the songs move at a glacial pace, others gallop quietly across the scorched landscape of dying grass and hot asphalt. The lyrical themes cover everything from the inescapable malaise of post-adolescent boredom and stasis to losing your place in life and finding solace in old hymns. Sutcliffe Catering Co mastermind Michael Hayes is a masterful aural architect, spending countless hours making sure everything is both blurry and crystalline at the same time. Tracking everything himself, Hayes proves himself capable of handling a wide range of sounds, making electric guitars sound like church organs, using egg shakers to an intimate effect, even sampling Charles Bukowski’s voice at the end of the aptly-named “Masturbation Coma”. If anything can be gleaned from the way Michael Hayes can utilize his instrumentation to create such shimmering beauty, it’s that Sutcliffe Catering Co has an entire world of textural allure locked away in some cramped Tuscon apartment.
Their bandcamp download has no minimum price.