I review so much music here a band is bound to slip my mind. Such is the case with these guys. I was looking over the inner webs to see what punk I might have missed out on over the course of the year, when I came across their name. Little did I realize that I reviewed their last album. I wasn't punk, and neither is this album. The opening song reminds me more of King Missile. The vocals and the disjointed manner in which the angular guitar parts bang around before colliding with your ear drums. The second song finds things becoming more confrontational as the vocals are screamed before falling back into a lazy croon. I like choice of dynamics they employ here, it's like grunge having a nervous breakdown.
"Privilege of Being" assaults' your senses with all kinds of noise used in a more ambient manner. The vocals are a drunken mess of slurred musings though minimalist even amid their worse intentions. It's a difficult song to get through even in it's most cohesive moments. "Margin for Error" is missing the mark at way more than just a margin. At 24 minutes long it is an exercise is excessive drone . It is not until eight and a half minutes in that it builds into something, and that something it regrettably short lived. Then at eleven and a half minutes it seems like the tedious song is about to go some where and that marks yet another false alarm. When Swans do this sort of thing there is more of a pay off and they make it more interesting along the way. Ten minutes later things try to work themselves up into something more musical intense , but the noise tips the scales.
Things begin to converge back into something closer to a song on "the Commercial Nude". The vocals follow the narrative of a fragile melody. Odd noises chirp in the back ground. To think there was someone who heard this and thought
"Oh, yeah that would be a great album to include as one of the best punk albums of the year so far"
They do offer to pound your ear drums in a manner not unlike Swans, Xiu Xiu or Sonic Youth, but there is nothing punk about it. The next time they decide to crash the party with an actual song is "the Reclining Nude". This one shows they are capable of writing actual songs when they feel like it, which makes the fact they are just toying with you and wasting your time with the other noise they try to pass off as songs. Perhaps it's the fact the piano is forming the spine of this song, that things are held together in a more melodic manner. Not that it always keeps things on track as even this song wanders off the rails, but does so with more musical sensibilities, to create an artful jam.
"We Think so Ill of You" is another exercise in what this album could have been. It has dynamics and jazzy touches to the more noise battered grooves it creates. "God, or Whatever You Call it" starts off on the wrong foot, with too much ambient noise piddling around . Five minutes in the chaotic guitars begin fiddling around and the song starts. It is another almost 25 minutes , which I am unsure if the journey is going to be worthwhile , as they did not prove themselves capable of writing something at this scope earlier. The vocals are more in the spoken rant side of what they do. Half way into , things begin to collapse into the buzz of noise, with disjointed guitar clawing it's way out. At the twelve minute mark it breaks down to the point that it is a new song. Fourteen minutes in things erupt with noise that is almost scary in it's shrill shriek. I will give this album a 6 , when things come together sometimes they work well, it's the sprawling waste of time some of the more tedious moments punish you with that soured me.
