This week I've got two albums for your consideration.
Pegboy
Fore:
This album is an EP of only four songs, but those four songs are damn near perfect, as far as I'm concerned. This little taste of Pegboy has got me waiting anxiously for a full album, and more of the same rockin' tunes they've thrown on here. Somehow the four members of Pegboy manage to pack equal parts of anger, rebellion and an amazing sense of melody into short little bursts of less than four minutes. I'm stunned.
"Never A Question" kicks off the EP, and is without a doubt the angriest song on here. Full-speed punk pop, but full of guitar jagged and distorted enough that Helmet would be proud to pull it off. They follow up with "Witnessed," a slower, less angry little tune, but with some great melodies. This is what all punk pop should sound like. It's extremely guitar-heavy, short enough that it holds the listener's attention, snarling and beautiful.
It's difficult for me to pick a best track on here, because the last two songs, "Minutes To Hours" and "Jesus Christ," are at least as good as the first two. I want to stand up on a high rock somewhere and proclaim "Witnessed" as the greatest loud pop song of all time, but the rest of the album is so good, I'm torn between it and the others. The only time Fore gets bogged down in any way is in the middle of the almost-instrumental "Jesus Christ," where they drop into Metallica bombast for a few minutes. The error is quickly rectified, though, and overall, this album is a spectacular debut.
Hair & Skin Trading Co.
Over Valence
I reviewed the Company's debut album a while back in these pages, so maybe in some way I should be a bit knowledgeable about the band, but I'm not. These three guys (bassist/vocalist Neil Mackay, guitarist Nigel Webb and drummer John Wills) are not in the music business to make money or to make albums that can be easily analyzed. Listening to Over Valence wasn't bad, by a long shot, but it was very difficult. Casual listeners who are looking for cheesy pop and sunny days won't find it here.
On the whole, this album is nowhere near as mechanical-sounding as their previous disc, Jo In Nine-G Hell, but somehow they still manage to instill a heavy feeling of unease. The music and the vocals are extremely repetitive, almost to the point of being hypnotic. Unlike Jo, this is in no way techno and would probably only be danceable if the listener happened to be on some unusual substances. One thing that seems to me to be important here is to listen to this album as a whole; it has a definite beginning and end, I think, and trying to figure out the stuff in between is the challenging part.
The album kicks off with "On Again Off Again," a slice of very ethereal dream-pop that echoes softly over and over again with a haunting kind of melancholy, especially in the chanted whisper "it's the end ... of everything that you know."
"Go Round," the second track, almost makes me think of some of the more surreal parts of "Twin Peaks," layering syncopated voices over one another and a snarling guitar base. The third song, "K-Funk," is probably the hardest-edged bit of noise on here. Rough, overdriven guitars saw back and forth above a firmly-anchored rhythm section and some almost subliminal samples and scratching, and the whole thing evokes some of the chaos of groups like Sonic Youth.
"Loa," the next on the album, is a complete about-face. Here the band lapses back into what could be termed dream-pop territory, but what reminds me instead of what Pink Floyd would sound like with tribal-sounding drums. This song is probably one of the few in which vocalist Mackay actual sings-- for the most part, he whispers, chants and mumbles, sounding just a shade less detached than U2's Edge.
"Loa" is my pick for the best real song on here, in part because it's one of the few that even fit the "song" mold. The following track, "F.D.M.," in typical Hair & Skin Trading Co. fashion, switches gears again and starts out with strange feedback and rhythmic noise, as well as some of the strangest guitar I've ever heard. Unfortunately, this track is one where the weirdness will most likely overcome the listener, as it did me.
The mantric quality of the singing really comes through on the sixth song, "Machine Gun (O.V.)," with Mackay chanting "fear equals power" over and over to the rumbling, fast-paced rhythms behind his voice.
On the following track, "Take Control," they go back to the dreaminess of "On Again Off Again," and the first side of the album ends with the aptly-named "Carrier Wave," one of the most interesting tracks. This song starts off with nothing but sparse, soft guitar tones, backed by extremely distant voice-sounds and drums. In the course of the song, the chorus-like voices and the drums get closer and closer, until they overpower the increasingly harsh, dissonant guitar - they effect they achieve is a very strong feeling of tension. Then, as the climax is reached, the drums and voices begin to fade into the distance, and the guitar returns to normal - it's somewhat like watching a train coming down the tracks, being overwhelmed by the noise and force as it reaches you, and then listening to it pass you by.
"Levers," the first on side two, is fairly standard, almost a rock song, but "Lock-Up," the second song, is nothing but rhythmic, mutilated noise -- neither one is particularly interesting, really. "Take Control II" is dominated by an unbelievably heavy bass pounding, and "Sub Surface" is another slowly-developing piece, with quiet, chiming noises, strange percussion, and slide guitar that goes from quiet and airy at first to a hard, gritty, nearly ZZ Top sound. "Static," the final track on Over Valence is a lush, orchestral-sounding wash of feedback that layers itself until the sound is very beautiful and dense, a bit reminiscent of bands like My Bloody Valentine or their way-less-poppy counterparts in noise, Earth.
This album is a difficult one to judge. The experience of listening to Over Valence is an extremely interesting one, but for a listener like me, who's unused to heavy doses of absurdity, it takes a lot of endurance and concentration just to keep listening. The repetition may seem boring at first, but the tranquility and tension it builds is a unique feeling. Turn it on and trance out.
(The Rice Thresher, Volume ??? No. ???, January 28, 1994)