Recently I’ve been listening to Four Columns by Screature a lot. The album came out last year, a joint release on the band’s Ethel Scull label and Sacto’s worthy Ss Records, and this recommendation to fellow lovers of bad and wicked sounds is overdue.

The band calls what it does “dark psych,” which is their prerogative, of course, but my ravaged ears and withering style detectors pick up a mainly goth vibe. Similarities to Bauhaus and Siouxsie aside, to me, that designation means: As I am entering the club and walking across the dance floor to the bar, the band on stage is not concerned with making me feel relaxed, sexy, confident, warm, righteous, angry, hungry or sad. They make with the fear. In fact, before even reaching the bar, I have to stop in the middle of the dance floor to use my inhaler and call my mother, and after the show, I am hesitant to approach the merch table lest the band steal my breath again. Panic is the idea.
 

via Bandcamp
 
So while the unhurried drums (Miranda Vera), hypnotic organ figures (Sarah Scherer) and reverb-laden guitar (Christopher Orr) are all integral to and necessary conditions of the Screature sound, what keeps me coming back to Four Columns is Liz Mahoney and the way she sings as if she has very bad news to deliver. You know the famous California vocal mannerism, where every sentence ends in a question mark, because, like, the pitch goes up at the end? Because “it’s all good”? Mahoney don’t play that, and she inverts the upward inflection to great effect. Her voice is smokier on this album than it was on Screature’s 2013 debut, so there’s a hint of that nice Richard Butler texture happening, too.

I’m not saying you and your friends should spend the night in a graveyard listening to Screature and drinking Boone’s Farm. I never said that. I’m just saying we’re all going to die someday.

Below, three songs from Four Columns, courtesy of Screature’s Bandcamp:
 

 
And here’s the video for “100 Lines”: