• Courtesy
• Harpoons, Tuber

(Self-released, digital)

The early days of the pandemic were a fertile time for creative people. Comedians honed their skills with virtual open mics. Visual artists cleaned out garages to make studio space. And musicians took a page from the book of Seattle indie pop band the Postal Service and made records remotely. Three years on from lockdown, we're still seeing the release of "quarantine albums." How deep is the well?

Tristate post-punk outfit Harpoons started work on their sophomore album, Tuber, just after the release of their fall 2020 debut, Pangs of Conscience. Out of necessity, the trio of New York City-based Nick Kennedy, Massachusetts resident Nate Lewis, and Vermont's (and Vermont Public's) Liam Elder-Connors went fully remote for its follow-up effort.

On Bandcamp, Harpoons' genre tags include "punk, basement, garage punk, noise, post punk" and "shoegaze," but a concise catchall could be "art rock." Their songs are impressionistic and eclectic, with strange, often self-reflexive lyrics. The whole record is dosed with anarchic composition.

Speaking of musical chaos, the bandmates switched up some of their duties this time, with Elder-Connors and Lewis occasionally swapping bass and guitar, the instruments they played on Pangs of Conscience, respectively. Kennedy helmed engineering duties, and he and Elder-Connors snowballed riffs and song sketches into the album's nine tracks. Always heavy on the basic elements of rock (guitar, bass, drums), Tuber also incorporates melodic and atmospheric synth.

Though the band members recorded separately and collaged the songs together, the album has plenty of "in the room" energy, particularly on the twisting, psychedelic instrumentals "Miffed" and "Pelican." The latter is almost like free jazz if it were made by a rock group. Overlapping elements clash and coalesce as a string of marimba arpeggios gurgles behind a swell of sustained electric guitars and cymbal-forward drumming.

Harpoons take some big swings, as on the shape-shifting "Butcher's Tea." Not only does it include a roiling, Breeders-esque bass line and some poppin' sax breaks from Elder-Connors' former Vermont Public colleague Henry Epp, but it devolves into a spoken-word ramble that recalls King Missile's "Detachable Penis" or the "Drive-By 2001 Remix" of Poe's "Hey Pretty," both minor hits on alt radio in the '90s and early 2000s.

Dropping whimsy for dark, goth energy, "The Sultan" creeps along with serpentine synth bass and haunting guest vocals from Lewis' wife, Kayla McAuley. Prickly and dripping with attitude, the song puts forth one of the album's strongest vibes.

Even when the songs slide into full-on weirdness, the trio keeps listeners rapt with its seemingly bottomless pit of ideas. Much like the plant structure for which the album is named, Harpoons are dense and underground, with tangential protrusions jutting out in all directions.

Tuber is available at harpoonsmusic.bandcamp.com and on all major streaming platforms.