Exit Dreams

The release of the Hunches’ third album Exit Dreams in early 2009 came with the news that the Portland, Oregon group was about to disband. That’s a shame, because this garage-rock combo achieves a grimy sort of excellence in these crude but not ungracious tracks. The Hunches suck the vital juices out of the fabled Nuggets compilations and spew them back with punkish glee. “Actors,” “From This Window,” and “Not Invented” trudge with inebriated menace, allowing singer Hart Gledhill room to rant at humanity. Note-gargling guitars and Neanderthal-style drumming lend “Deaf Ambitions” and “Street Sweeper” a mind-frying psychedelic aroma. Glendhill and his cohorts flail about joyfully during manic exercises like “Carnival Debris” and “Your Sick Blooms,” and on “Swim Hole” they skirt the edge of acceptable power-pop, though sheer weirdness keeps them from falling in. In its own shambolic way, Exit Dreams seems like the work of committed rock scholars who know all the moves of semi-forgotten ‘60s no-hit wonders. But it also sounds like the unfettered eruption of maladjusted outsiders with no goal except to flip off the world. If the Hunches had to exit from the scene, this was the way to go.