I’ve mentioned my fondness for the skewed indie rock coming out of Lawrence, Kansas in the early ’90s on a few occasions, but this is the first time you’ve heard it, two good starting points are Zoom’s 1994 Helium Octipede (stream of full album!) and Panel Donor’s 1996 Surprise Bath. Those records move past the post-grunge heft that’s more typical to the region/era (e.g., Hum’s Electra 2000, Shiner’s Lula Divinia, Zoom’s eponymous debut, Love Cup’s Greefus Groinks and Sheet) to a warbling, jagged-line approach to guitar, perhaps akin to Greg Sage of the Wipers dueling with Ash Bowie from Polvo. Beyond drinking from the same water supply, the common thread between those two groups was Jeremy Sidener, the Zoom bassist who joined Panel Donor as a second guitarist prior to their sophomore release, Lobedom & Global.

Fast-forward fifteen years (some of which was spent in the Danny Pound Band with the singer of Vitreous Humor) and Jeremy Sidener is in a new band out of Lawrence, Kansas, playing bass and singing in Major Games. He’s joined by guitarist/vocalist Doug McKinney and drummer Steve Squire, formerly the guitarist/vocalist of Everest (the Kansas version, not the current Americana outfit from California), giving Lawrence historians more than enough cross-references to highlight. The sonic connections to their predecessors come via the tell-tale tremolo-bar twang of the guitar and the urgent vocal delivery of Sidener on the up-tempo tracks.

You won’t mistake EP 1 for a lost Panel Donor or Zoom album, however. The sound has been fleshed out and modernized, taking cues from shoegaze revival bands and pairing those signature leads with textural accompaniments. The vocal trade-offs between Sidener and McKinney pace EP 1 nicely; the former applies a slight dose of Devo fidgeting to his three songs, while the latter handles the slow-burning “Spools” and “Wet Talk.”

All five tracks have accrued heavy play counts at my desk and in my car over the past month, but “Wet Talk” stands out as the highlight of EP 1. Stretching past eight minutes on Sidener’s expressive, up-front bass line, “Wet Talk” grapples with a still-stinging regret. McKinney sings “They come for your time / They come for your money / They come as family / As all of your love / As all of what you love,” and it’s hard not to linger on “family” as the breaking point of this narrative/warning. It may not have the anxious energy of the Sidener-fronted tracks, but it remains compelling throughout.

Major Games’ EP 1 is both a reward for those who’ve kept Zoom and Panel Donor in their listening pile and a healthy reminder that Lawrence is not done producing memorable indie rock groups. I mentioned that you won’t mistake EP 1 for a lost Panel Donor or Zoom album, and in full disclosure, I’d still recommend it if that had been the case. But I’m much happier with the actual result, which brings a decidedly different energy to the current surplus of shoegaze-informed acts.