The Hunches - Exit Dreams

File as: the real deal. So says the press release accompanying what’s likely to be the last album from Portland garage-rockers The Hunches. And we can’t argue with the summary’s simple perfection.

Since emerging from whatever swamp their deeply lo-fi squall originally crawled forth from with 2002’s ‘Yes. No. Shut It’ LP, the raucous four-piece have laid waste to audience ears with a barrage of snarling feedback and screamed vocals somewhere between psychedelic freak-out and a grunge fallout. 2004’s ‘Hobo Sunrise’ found them focus and refine this assault somewhat, but still the band rocked with a rawness absent in many of the garage-rock scene’s allegedly authentic outfits

‘Exit Dreams’ is, at this point at least, the band’s final LP; that it arrives going on five years since its predecessor prompts much speculation about its gestation, about member differences and relationships impossible to salvage. But if they’re splitting for good, what a way to go – ‘Exit Dreams’ is no burn out, more a brilliant explosion of everything The Hunches represented during their recording career.

At every turn there’s the purest passion, the roughest gems – ‘Ate My Teeth’ squeals like Mudhoney’s four pinned against a barn wall by a tractor, its melodies evident but only once the alerting alarm has died down. ‘Your Sick Blooms’ clatters and crashes like the best of Black Lips – a pop tune buried by congealed spit and bile. But ‘Exit Dreams’ isn’t all tinnitus-inducing bombast – ‘From This Window’ finds the foursome slowing their pace, albeit for but a few fleeting minutes, and represents a mid-album highlight standing proud in a sea of crackle and fuzz.

‘Swim Hole’ closes proceedings with a typically rambunctious flourish, leaving the fan saddened by the end of another act worth the gig admission (believe, there are fewer and fewer out there), while the newcomer may well be promoted to explore the band’s recommended previous releases.

And they should, too, as this is about as real as the real deal can get without being The Stooges in ’69.