I’m not a member of the “voice cultivation” school of writing. A patented, personal, and inflexible tone for all occasions seems aesthetically and intellectually inert, not to mention rather self-defeating as Ted Kaczynski well knows. Not that I didn’t adopt this position immediately. In fact I spent five years of my 20s experimenting with what my singular voice might sound like.
The music criticism I wrote for Treblezine, a fraction of which is excerpted below, is the inverse of the writing I was putting into Biopsy at the same time. While Biopsy stood at the periphery of the age, my Treblezine contributions tried to be more at the center of the action; so much so that in some parts you can just hear the Vice back issues gathering their first layer of dust. The results were mixed. Biopsy ignored “indie sleaze” and anticipated the morally and psychologically unmoored sensibility of our present time, but it was too early and I lacked the full confidence in my judgments. Meanwhile I was channeling all my rhetorical bombast and effusive egocentricity onto a lot of bands I’ve gone on to forget.
Some will look on these works and despair that I never pursued this style further and more consistently, polished it and allowed it to mature. Because then at least I’d be a more traceable read and not look seemingly bored by everything as I probably do now. Fair enough. I found I wasn’t as horrified with some of these as I thought I’d be, even with my grammatical and syntactical clumsiness, which I here tried to polish, and my not always mature rhetoric, which I left as is. But the rereads also reminded me why the fun did not last. At some point I’d “lost” my “voice,” and what follows is about as much as I could stomach of its remnants. At least it shows that I was there, and it was basically fine.
The world of [Clockcleaner] is a nether region in which citizens live happily with reversed moral courtesies. A living, vibrant naked body is vomit-inducing, while a corpse is the ultimate and most popular sexual thrill. The same would go for a slap on the face, whereas a gentle embrace is cause for anxiety and alarm.
Babylon Rules, simply put, is beastly but imbued with stark grooves that give way to the band’s charm. It just so happens that Clockcleaner’s charm is comfortably akin to an amputee peepshow girl. This is further established with the adolescent Nick Cave croons and grunts while cavernous guitars screech against cold concrete walls, fuzz bass lines rattle the base of the skull and the drums palpitate the heart. —Clockcleaner, Babylon Rules (2007)
In these times of desperation and the uncertainty of complete safety, the frightened masses turn to evil in hopes of singling out the blackening sphere that eclipses their good times. If that’s too abstract for you then you’re quite astute in your observations as evil is really just an abstract concept when you think about it. It’s a stupid word used as an excuse to do unfathomable things like start wars, have kids, and allow celebrities to express themselves like actual human beings. However flakey the ugly spirit may be, the premonitions of bleakness that accompany Oxbow wherever their sound takes them are very real and very unnerving. Though they’ve been a band for nearly two decades, it hardly seems that the bile has settled and gone stale. Five years after the release of An Evil Heat, civilization’s worst life coach ever and his merry band of math rock geeks have taken a break from writing books, side projects and performing unplugged to threaten audiences more effectively as a lethal collective. —Oxbow, The Narcotic Story (2007)
Last Light bugles from inward to the surface with tender adolescent sweetness and lackluster poetry …. [F]rom my detractors will come a tidal wave of bitching and moaning to their friends, roommates, and drunk hook-ups about how I’m such a miserable cocksucker and I should jump headfirst onto oncoming traffic instead of wasting my time bashing what they may call “the most awesome, sincere, and emotional band in the history of sound.” And they’d be right, I’ve come to terms long ago that I am a total prick who has shitloads of fun vandalizing parking meters, shooting guns, and making people generally unhappy. I’m kind of like Steve Albini, if he were a pussy with less talent. But Matt Pond PA still isn’t all that great. —Matt Pond PA, Last Light (2007)
[The Bodies Obtained] consider themselves a bit of an enigma, never performing live, not having any photos, and so forth, which is not, oddly enough, the puzzle. Rather it is how they go about making the claim. Not being as public as per the norm is actually a mini-tradition in rock music. Among its sturdiest practitioners are Jandek, Jeff Mangum, and Corrupted. What separates these artists from The Bodies Obtained is that the former don’t rely on publicists to publicize it while also contradicting it by going on at length about things we don’t normally know about bands with no professed affinity with the Sasquatch. It would seem, as dictated by common logic, that elusive bands would not be so willing to provide an extensive biography, a lyric sheet, and certainly not meanings behind the lyrics. The whole packaging of the band could be entirely innocent, but I personally can’t help but detect insincerity in it. It brings about conflict over how it is I or anyone else is supposed to approach the band. Though others will disagree, the intended context of the band is compromised by an abundance of information, of things I should be speculating on as opposed to repeating in one form or another as certainty. —The Bodies Obtained, From the Top of My Tree (2009)
It would seem that two camps will and perhaps already have formed around [The Coathangers] and their style professing two starkly opposing summaries …. On the one side you’ll have those in favor of the “sensitive.” The other side being in favor of the “incompetent.” The sensitive camp are of the opinion that The Coathangers’ preference for demo-dirty studio production as well as seemingly atonal instrumentation and minimalist song structuring is deliberate, indicative of a state of mind that puts ideas like “art” and perhaps even “fun” over other ideas like “technique.” The other camp, the incompetent camp, … favor the opposite and think that The Coathangers, no matter how much in the right they are for existing in the first place, shall never not suck if this is the direction they so choose or are simply limited to in their creation and execution.
When looking at the sum of the album as opposed to its parts, one can no doubt detect, even from the first few seconds, that The Coathangers have no intention on upholding the manners instilled in them during childhood, let alone in a studio setting. Provocation and the making of messes are the orders of everyday for an indefinite period, and where the lo-fi production merely hints, the attitude takes it all the way to deep black certainty. —The Coathangers, Scramble (2009)
Skeletonbreath have a desire for calamity if not full-on chaos, this much is evident. But it seems at this point that they are flirting with calamity more than anything. The band like to describe themselves as a “Halloween party band,” which is a perfect summary of their sound, just not in the way they are likely to be thinking. Halloween is a celebration deeply rooted in the culture of the Celts in which they, in a fashion typical for those who would become the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish, would honor as well as fear the spirits of their ancestors who may or may not be able to walk the earth during Samhain. Halloween parties are romps with beer and costumes both unrepentantly whorish and shabbily conceived, where attendees jettison all manners and politeness to fuck shit up, like any other holiday really. There’s nothing scary about Halloween parties and so logically there is nothing scary about Skeletonbreath. —Skeletonbreath, Eagle’s Nest, Devil’s Cave (2009)
Crystal Castles do not … play music that would be considered friendly. Their type of dance music is not that which promotes communal hedonism like rave or house culture did or does, but rather a deterioration of individual self-control, a willing possession of sorts with no particular concern as to whether good or bad feelings come out of it so long as it’s feeling all the same. It’s basically punk, as completely visceral and cathartic as anything produced by Minor Threat, The Jesus Lizard, or Big Black. It’s what Ministry’s With Sympathy probably could have sounded like if Jourgensen had his way-assuming that label pressure was indeed the main factor behind that regrettable album. In any case it’s certainly a minor comfort at the very least that nihilism remains an attractive artistic concept if not a full-on social one, and can be reconciled pretty handily with attractive sounds. —Crystal Castles, (II) (2010)
These resulting quirks and passions can, at times, make for aggravating listening if one does not like atonal tinkering of perfectly decent chords and needless sounds and voices thrown at in no discernible direction. The opening track “That Won’t Get Blood Out of a Clown Suit” is a highly imperfect amalgam of freewheeling prog rock and basement-dwelling creep rock. If I didn’t know better I would believe that a crazy person wrote that song and, failing to impress the Beach Boys, started a shitty hippie cult whose followers he convinced to go on a senseless killing spree. And yet at times the result is also intriguing. Their talent for crafting fluid repetition renders naked the potential for the first seven minutes of “Whatever It Takes to Sleep” to be stretched to at least 20 while keeping whatever room it is played in filled with youthful, somewhat drunken lushness. —Locks, Suicides Don’t Commit Themselves (2010)
For all the ambition [Thermals have] exuded in the past, it’s not in any way heretical to pull back on it a little bit, to be more modest, show some humility, and not hide as many stretch marks from those they love. What is somewhat more heretical is that they are challenging us to keep our interest, to remain engaged at the level that they deem fit, though what level that may be will likely differ between the band and the audience. The latter will likely be as interested in this album as they will a perfectly drawn smiley face on a colored sheet of paper, as that is the visual equivalent of what they did with this album. —Thermals, Personal Life (2010)
One can admire White Hills outright for being able to create the type of sound and song arrangement that they clearly have an abiding love for. This album, crafted with considerable crispness and detail, is by no means an agitating listen in the entirely wrong sense. White Hills’ palate veers at will from distorted, fevered pop (“Dead”) to sprawling jams (“Let the Right One In”) to overwhelming ambient noise (“Glacial”), all of it done passionately, fluidly, and without an iota of forced ideas. Like any good band steeped in the American acid haze, they hardly shirk from crafting brash guitar riffs that are at once distorted into some variation of fuzz/muff and comprehendible; nor are they squeamish about their repetition which, again like any other psychedelic band, they make good use of. Riffs, such as those on the closing track “Polvere Di Stelle,” can drone on and on, but its that transcendent type of drone that, while nauseating the meek-eared, will envelop the listener in just the type of red-lighted dread that they quite possibly envisioned whilst writing the piece. In the great wall of noise, White Hills are no worse masons and architects than anyone else. —White Hills, self-titled (2010)
Someone once asked me that if given the choice, would I prefer to die by drowning or by burning alive? What may seem like a frivolous question to some was actually quite serious to me. We’re talking about death after all, and while few deaths outside of suicide get next to no preferential input from the dying themselves, it’s still good to know what one is dealing with, let alone what one is talking about. So I hatched a plan to apprehend someone (likely someone on whom I wanted to get revenge), bind by the wrists and ankles, and dip headfirst into a body of water; just long enough for the subject to pass out so that I can revive him or her and survey his or her experience. Regrettably I could not go forward with this plan for a number of reasons, but I came upon an answer through different means. Several weeks after being asked I told my colleague what I think to be the most logical answer: if drowning feels how Toro y Moi sounds, then I’d gladly jump headfirst into the Hudson today. —Toro y Moi, Underneath the Pine (2011)
Clay Class … does not deviate too far from band’s previous blueprint. In fact many would consider it the twin of their debut album. But twins are not clones, and there are some deviations that see them softening their edge and purifying their perversion, if only slightly. The cerebral intensity of the last album carried over into this one more or less intact, and should please those few people who actually liked that about them. Songs like “Usurper,” “Your Fire Has Gone Out,” “Turn Up the Light” and “Sing Orderly” are tight compositions, rife with amelodic repetition and/or spare scratches of dissonance, and colored with cold diary-like observations, minimalist poetics and/or poorly expressed outbursts. When they change course they do so by injecting melody into their songs, and by extension framing songs in a more textured arrangement, and enlivening them with more concrete feeling. Generally speaking that melody is slight and the feeling is melancholic, fatalistic even, but still more notable than anything else on the album. The titular lyric from the opening song, “We’re happy in pieces/ Happy in bits,” is the clearest lyric in the song and sums up an overall feeling that swings from hope to despair with ease. It carries over with their dreary but nonetheless moving version of “Boys of Summer,” “Seed, Crop, Harvest,” to the unnerving melding of desire and malice in “I Want You,” to the kitchen sink realism and cynically realist escapism of “Flora and Fauna of Britain in Bloom.” Each song is beautiful in its own way … and each song bares its own scars that, while in various stages of healing, are less superficial than those bared on older songs like “Space Invader.”
With even the minor diversifications in Clay Class, it’s clear that the Fall comparisons become less plausible. If Prinzhorn ever had an ancestor there is no better one than Shellac. Like Shellac, PDS are known for their idiosyncratic, DIY-or-die process as much as they are for the equally idiosyncratic results. Those results being sparse, quirky songs that, as time goes by, become formed less and less by outside influences and more and more by the temperaments of the creators as they react to everything from rabid dogs to hostile neighbors to changing seasons while also alienating themselves from those very elements. We can’t expect them to change so much as we can expect them to keep their eyes opened, their teeth ground and their pale fists clenched, regardless as to whether it is in expectation of disaster, anticipation of relief, or simply the day after yesterday, before tomorrow and the next day, etc. —Prinzhorn Dance School, Clay Class (2012)
[The Twilight Sad have] jettisoned the guitar almost entirely and filled the void with a variety of synthesizers. What might be considered “going soft” in traditional cases is not so with this one. The sparser sound actually reveals a greater degree of aching and damage behind the tough front of the previous albums, much like a rage addict in a brief moment of levity. The vocals come off higher in the mix and have an added desperation to them; the rhythm section is lighter but also faster and more precise, like the quickened pulse rather than the pounding fist. The synthesizers themselves, however, are not meant to be wholesale surrogates for the guitars. While some songs are indeed held together by standard chord progressions (most notably the new wave-infused “Don’t Look at Me” and trance-like “Another Bed”), the keys are pressed more for ambience than for melody, a tense ambience at that. What transpires on “Alphabet,” “Don’t Move” and “Nil” recall the steely compositions of most krautrock and the early industrial of Coil and Cabaret Voltaire. Notable respites include “Sick,” the only truly guitar-driven track that’s garnering more than its fair share of Radiohead comparisons, for good or ill, and the powerful closer “Kill It in the Morning,” which trudges at first before rising to a confrontational power-rock on par with, if not superior to, anything on The Fragile.
No One Can Ever Know has all the aggression of the previous albums but instead of catharsis we get anxiety in some places and defeat in others. Images of aging and bodies lying prostrate make repeat appearances John Graham’s ever-impressionistic lyrics which lend to feeling and image more than narrative, like the barely legible parts of burnt letters from scorned loved ones. “You crawl to the window sill, outside is still, by the neck you hold us,” Graham recalls in “Don’t Move.” Who the “you” is to Graham is unclear, though the image is striking enough to inspire different versions in the listener that could all be conceivably correct. “Three girls saw her/ Looking so thin/ Black and bruised skin,” from “Sick” too is both vague and eerie, and could trigger any number of memories in our minds that were trivial at first but become more sinister as time wears on them. —The Twilight Sad, No One Can Ever Know (2012)
It would be a real stretch of logic to call Blood Red Shoes original or inventive. Indeed, they seem to be evangelists for an old-world, conservative sound of the unleaded guitar, touring incessantly, mostly in Europe, in order to preach. And preach they do. Much of Blood Red Shoes’ output is driven as much by passion as by raw skill. They’ve been at it for about eight years now without relent in a flurry of guitar effects, pounding drums, dual vocals, and abstract lyrics about being bored and/or disappointed. One wonders how it’s possible to be passionate about being bored, but it hasn’t not worked so far. Box of Secrets and Fire Like This are effective cocktails of passion and skill, the latter having some of the best singles of 2010-11. It’s evident that they can gain sustenance from this dynamic and in turn excrete something of genuine feeling if not something entirely remarkable. —Blood Red Shoes, In Time to Voices (2012)