Depending on your office’s dress code, you might’ve gotten a sarcastic compliment on your khaki business bottoms. Or maybe someone once gave you genuine praise on a sanguine series of work messages. If not, we’ve got a good reason for the phrase “sweet slacks” to enter your mind and exit your mouth.

And that’s on behalf of Austin four-piece Sweet Slacks, who first got together in 2018. The quartet started off strong with a pair of EPs in 2019, plus a third one the following Fall. That said, Sweet Slacks’ studio output has been relatively quiet on this side of the pandemic, that is, up until recently. See, over the past couple years, Sweet Slacks has really been busting their hump with a series of new singles, all of which pinch the band’s collective inseam and press out the creases for some of their best sounding releases to date.

As we zip up to Sweet Slacks’ upcoming full-length, today we officially hit the three quarters mark of this debut LP’s dozen with “Scratch Off”. Where late June’s “Stitches (1&2)” explored the melodic momentum of pop-punk and mid-July’s “Shine” showed the group’s grasp on sparkly shoegaze, “Scratch Off” is a lucky draw for indie rock purists who prefer a middle ground between those two predecessors. After one hell of an anthemic intro riff that goes on to evenly split this four-and-a-half-minute moseyin’, “Scratch Off” breathes easy with distinct dynamic shifts, where the lowered volume of its verses provides some nice variety its more ecstatic, explosive hooks.

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