Diagonal is a psych-leaning five piece that hails from Chicago, and today we catch up with their excellent single, “Detroit.” The band features Midwest Action label director Dan Jarvis on bass, guitar, and percussion, Silas Mishler on vocals, Alex Brumley on guitar, Dale Price on bass, guitar, and synth, as well as Chris Detlaff on drums. The group’s Spring 2019 single also includes a B-side cover of the Gary Numan/Tubeway Army track “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?“
On “Detroit,” the group lays down a smoldering groove driven by a motorik pulse of bass and drums. Like a peel of purple smoke dissipating in the night air, guitars and synth swirl with a cosmic ambiance. When singer Silas Mishler emerges from this spectral mist he sounds transfixed by something just outside our sight. With Detroit’s decaying cityscape seeming to provide the lyrical imagery here, this cut is imbued with some serious urban dread and awe. Though Mishler paints a bleak picture complete with “rats in light,” when he induces us with a reverb-soaked “let’s go,” we are more than ready to follow.
