Water on Mars

With 2013’s Water on Mars, Purling Hiss’s founder and frontman Mike Polizze expands his scratchy basement recordings into a trio that features bassist Kiel Everett and drummer Mike Sneeringer. This nine-song album also finds Polizze veering from his previous no-fi production values (or lack thereof) for a more accessible lo-fi sound that inevitably got him lumped in with Ty Segall and Kurt Vile. But it also got him on live support slots with those artists, as well as with Wilco and Dinosaur Jr. The opening song here, “Lolita,” makes a grand entrance. It sounds like the bastard son of Bleach-era Nirvana, replete with chainsaw-buzzing guitars and Polizze’s vocals recalling Kurt Cobain (back when his blond hair went past his shoulders). The following “Mercury Retrograde” and the melodic “Rat Race” both have more in common with the '90s-inspired indie rock songs that peppered Purling Hiss's preceding album, Public Service Announcement. “Dead Again” dials down the distortion box for a surfy acoustic number that plays like Polizze was raised on Vaselines vinyl. “Mary Bumble Bee” closes with '60s garage rock tones.