Blades, Who’s the Creampuff Now?

Alright, so I’m pretty favorably disposed, these days, to any band that can do the D.I.Y. thing, no fancy-shmancy computers and whatnot involved, and pull it off. Oddly, I’ve found myself yearning for the days of hand-cut 7″ sleeves, painstakingly glued together and assembled like poor bastards like myself used to have to do back in the day; I’ll grant that the advent of cheap CD-Rs and laser printers has been a godsend for a lot of musicians, but there’s still something intensely personal about a handmade release, y’know?

Of course, these days “D.I.Y.” also seems to equate to “sounds like ass.” Sorry, but my indie-nostalgia only extends as far as the packaging. For me, the days when you could record your album using a tin can for a mic and get away with it are long-dead — or should be, at any rate, pushed off a cliff into the sea or dumped in a shallow grave. Take this EP, Who’s the Creampuff Now?, the first ever release from badass instro-rockers Blades. The sleeve’s hand-made, complete with scribbly pen on a freaky bit of cover collage-art, and the back cover’s pretty much hand-written track names and a teeny little bit of info. Actually, it even pushes my limits for what you should do for a release (after a certain point, it’s just laziness, folks), but given the cover art and the way it sounds, man, I can forgive it.

There’s certainly nothing sloppy about the music here. Blades play math-rock-y, churn-and-sway indie-rock that recalls June of 44, Slint, Rodan, and the rest of that whole Kentucky/Chicago axis of bands, and they do it like nobody’s business. The whole thing’s tight as a drum, muscular and intricate, with freakin’ incredible drumming from Kyle (no last names needed, apparently), who, along with bassist David, pretty much propels the songs along from track to track.

Top of the heap is second track “Fury Christmas,” which nearly comes off like two or three separate songs mashed together, except that the music’s so driving you don’t even mind when you check the CD and see that yep, you’re still on track 2. Chris and John’s guitars are sharp-edged and precisely dissonant without being grating, reminiscent of underappreciated mathcore heroes aMINIATURE, and the rhythms flow beneath like a river flush with rain, shifting and surging in unexpected directions.

There’s noise in there, too, but it adds nicely to the whole. In fact, for me that’s the appeal of bands like these — Blades is one of those groups that can combine seemingly discordant musical elements, whether you’re talking off-time rhythms, keening, screeching guitars, or bursts of flat-out noise, and meld them into something that’s (believe it or not) quite beautiful in its own right. A good example on Creampuff is “Flares ‘n Stacks,” which starts out delicate and meditative, just two guitars dancing hypnotically around one another, but rises steadily to more majestic, ambitious-sounding heights. At points it makes me think of a more down-to-earth, slightly less “metal” Pelican, and that’s no bad thing.

The Pelican resemblance stretches further on “You’ve Reached a Lion, So Leave a Message,” which sounds in a few spots like dextrous heavy metal dudes Mastodon in its noodliness; heck, it’s practically prog-rock. Squint hard enough, and some of the bridges could be straight off of Rush’s 2112. And no, I’m not trying to slam the band by saying that — I’ve got no problem with a little prog influence, so long as the band doesn’t let it get in the way of coming up with actual interesting songs, and Blades certainly has no problem there. (The fact that there are no dorky lyrics here about priests of Syrinx helps, naturally.)

There are a few fumbles along the way, but that’s to be expected. First track “Goons, Hired Goons” swipes one of my all-time favorite Simpsons lines ever but leaves me somewhat cold, in the end hitting like a length lead-in to “Fury Christmas” instead of a standalone composition. And then at the end of “You’ve Reached a Lion, So Leave a Message,” the music reaches its conclusion and fades out but then drifts for another six minutes on subtle layers of static and oceanic samples before swinging back in for a bit of pseudo-surf rock/spy music. The first bit’s relaxing in a white-noise machine kind of way, especially on second or third listens, but the tacked-on bit of surf-rock’s really not worth the time — I’d almost rather they just kept on with the splashing water and birds and then faded to nothing.

But eh, these are small quibbles, considering that I’ve already spun this little disc five times in a row. Even the “bad” spots are hardly that, and the good spots more than make up for ’em. I’m already wishing for more from those Blades guys.