Motocrossed formed somewhere in the underbelly of Charlotte's D.I.Y. scene, where the city's feral punk bloodlines still run hot beneath the strip malls and high-rises. They play like they were raised equal parts by Appalachian rural folk and hellraising hardcore matinees, sweet country-tinged balladry curdling without warning into rabid, feedback-worshiping noise—the razor's edge where youthful fever meets outsider-rock abandon. Their self-titled debut is a sprawling, wild-eyed concoction, an Elephant 6-inspired tangle of gnarled folk and pickled shoegaze where theremin, singing saw, and glockenspiel snarl together like strays fighting over a carcass. "Possum Dog" is the record's molten center, a ten-minute slow-burn that erupts into floor-shaking grandiosity somewhere around the point most bands would've faded out. The album's heart-shaped doily cover—a figure spooning a 2-stroke dirtbike, tender and absurd and a little bit heartbroken—says everything about what's inside: bone-deep crooning that collapses, again and again, into a brushfire of knotted, joyous strangeness.
