Review by HARRIET KAPLAN
Dog In Hell by Funny Face is an incredibly catchy and fun pop-punk EP that has huge hooks. This solid effort emphasizes a lo-fi immediacy and puts the music directly in your face with unbridled excitement and enthusiasm.
One can’t help but be compelled to repeatedly play all eight tracks on Dog In Hell from start to finish. The music puts you in a great mood and you just want to rock out and let go of all your inhibitions and dance around like a maniac.
Right away, you can tell Funny Face is comprised of incredibly talented musicians and the arrangement is rock solid. The only drawback to the EP is that the vocals are buried way down in the mix. Also, the singer Adam Szyndrowski, who plays guitar, is inaudible against the barrage of instrumentation coming directly at you.
There’s nothing wrong with that to a point but maybe the next time, the Bay Area-based band, which also features Mallery Petty on bass and backing vocals, and Ryan Hendry on drums, may want to give their future efforts more sonic balance.
There’s a lot of manic energy emitting from the speakers maybe that’s due to the EP being recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. While most people in the world have felt the effects of the pandemic, creative types have gone stir crazy not being able to play out live and forced to record at home. That has been only the only real outlet besides using Zoom to communicate with the outside world for many people, let alone those folks in the entertainment industry.
When asked the “inspiration” for the new EP, Szyndrowski said: “The nights you never want to stop.”
Funny Face came together as a unit in 2014. They threw underground shows in their own garage along with other area groups. This groundwork, unfortunately, attracted almost too much attention including that of the local police. Eventually, the gigs moved into the living room, the cops never came again and Funny Face was on its way. Now, the band is all about vans, hangouts, and driving around as a tight crew of best friends playing.
Dog In Hell
Tracklist:
Seventeen
Measuring Cups
Don’t Go Away
So it Goes
My Heart Don’t Skip a Beat
East Hills
Dumpster Love
98 Civic.
