Record Reviews
A Bitter Fight Against Nothing
originally published December 14, 2005
Athens band A Bitter Fight Against Nothing has been steadily gaining ground of the past year as a regular at Tasty World hardcore nights and other venues. It’s easy to see why there’s some enthusiasm behind the band, too. It has all the earmarks of modern hardcore punk present (metal-saturated guitars, vocals screamed into incomprehensibility, etc.) in its sound and the members seem to be quite sincere about what they’re doing.
Put Down Your Guns… opens with the ambitious two-part track “The Last of Us,” but the best bit only appears after the song has been going for almost three minutes following a slower, intro-type progression. “By Way Of A Sweet Smelling Sacrifice” holds the heavy metal line solidly until a moody breakdown around the second minute appears. Then the track goes into overdrive with what sounds like an additional guitar track. Except for that middle part, the track is powerful.
“Put Hot Sauce On the Barrel, It Tastes Better That Way,” however, is a track as cumbersome as its name. The drums sound hollow and the guitars are too far into the high-end. Again, the band throws a slow part into the middle of the song and thus takes away much of the power of the track. This isn’t a peculiarity of ABFAN; it’s been an ongoing thing in hardcore punk for about 10 years now and has become the recipe. It’s a standard practice, however, that I really have little time for, as it robs the songs of any momentum, efficiency or immediacy.
The band finally kicks into super-high gear with the final track “Heart Of Dead Leaves.” The guitars carry a solid metal progression and even though the band still does the fast-then-slow thing, it doesn’t take all the power out of the songs as it did on previous tracks.
ABFAN is a solid live band and I’ve found performances enjoyable, but this EP causes some concern. I’d like to see the band develop more of its own voice and get rid of those infuriatingly typical breakdowns. A band with this much potential power shouldn’t sacrifice speed, volume and energy just for this gimmicky effect.
Gordon Lamb A Bitter Fight Against Nothing is playing at the Georgia Theatre on Thursday, Dec. 15.Record Reviews
American Princes
originally published December 14, 2005
The American Princes seek out a “purer” style of rock, but there are two similarly gravel-voiced bands, the Walkmen and the Constantines, that have already managed to bring stripped-down, prefix-free rock back into prominence and, in turn, have kept the genre as a viable source of musical expression. Those two bands’ style of rock feels more like a proper “return” as well, as if they went traveling with rock and its many fragmented sub-genres and came back steeped in wisdom and wielding thunder.
So if the American Princes want to compete with those guys, they’ll need to quit trying to “be” a rock band and just be a band that must rock in order to be a band. A band’s ability to rock is not about the tightness of, or number of holes in, the members’ jeans, but has more to do with what is encoded within the group’s musical genes.
The track “In the Dark,” which musically sounds a little too much informed by the Shins’ “New Slang,” is a sad crooner about staying up all night alone and eating a Tylenol breakfast with alcohol dinners. It’s this kind of whiskey-sad romanticism that ultimately boxes the American Princes in and keeps them from being an interesting band.
Little Spaces does have strong points. The austere and drum-driven opening track, “I Want to be Good,” is a confident head- bobber. And the American Princes do have three talented singers who produce some blissful moments of harmonization, as in “The Sun Never Sets.” The title track pummels, as does the mathy “Man’s World” and parts of “What’s This We’ve found,” so given the right amount of Budweiser in the audience, there could be some well-deserved fist-pumping.
Nick HastyRecord Reviews
Modest & Humble
originally published December 14, 2005
So, uh, if you know anything about rap in general, you know that obviously they’re neither modest nor humble, but these two no-name Detroit emcees have a surprising amount of talent. It’s not that their lyrics are great - they’re mostly fill-in-the-blanks rhymes about bitches (the title of the first song, actually) and rides - but there’s an easy flow to the album that draws you in. You really might want to be shocked by “Girl Cums,” which mixes claims of sexual prowess with gunshot sounds, but for one thing, Modest and Humble are kind of approaching the subject from the right direction, and for another, the snappy, clappy beat over a simple, retro synth mixes smoothly with the playful rhythms of the vocals.
There’s also a consistent energy at work, a commitment to moving things along, even when they’re a little repetitive, that contrasts nicely with G-Unit’s sluggishness. Don’t expect samples; it’s mostly keyboard and drum beats throughout, though the standout track, “Sit Back,” incorporates a strong rock guitar riff and a sung chorus, giving it a curvy sound that wouldn’t be shocking in a Shakira song.
There are skippable parts of Our Ways, but the album contains as many good songs as bad ones (“Ride Wit Me” would make a great single), and whatever it is, it’s not disappointing. Note that the album is only available on-line in digital formats, from stores like iTunes.
Hillary BrownRecord Reviews
Wade O. Brown
originally published December 14, 2005
If you’re apt to track the obsessions of various writers who do these reviews, you may have thought, with regard to yours truly, “That girl just likes any R&B that comes out.” But it ain’t so. I’ve just been lucky lately. And Wade O. Brown’s debut album shows it. It’s more in the mold of “classic soul” than contemporary R&B, with simpler beats and no guest slots for rappers, but those quotation marks are eminently necessary. This is the kind of bland soul perpetuated by Ruben Studdard.
You know how it’s kind of charming how low-budget the instrumental backing to Barry White sounds these days? Like his cousins decided to jam at the church on some borrowed equipment? Thing is, you need a voice like Barry White’s to pull that kind of thing off, a voice that can transcend tired basslines and lite-radio melodies.
Occasionally, a touch of early Michael Jackson creeps in on All Night, All Love (the title track is one place, with a drumbeat that briefly calls to mind “Billie Jean”), but mostly it’s more Peabo Bryson than Al Green, and the songs that aim at seduction miss sexy by a mile. Yes, the picture behind the CD is a bed surrounded by candles and scattered with rose petals, but the impression the music conveys is that of a thorough neutering.
Hillary BrownRecord Reviews
PPR
originally published December 14, 2005
This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in a long time, and possibly in all time. The aural equivalent of a kid lighting his farts, Diarrhea, the Atlanta band’s second album, is the product of a bunch of guys who are 1) really trying to offend folks or 2) don’t care what the hell they’re doing at any time. More than likely, the case is the latter, but there’s a decent amount of the first also, such as the track “Drunk Sister Fuck” in which the singer tells of his desire to become intimately acquainted with his buddy’s sibling.
The album is, musically speaking, a cross between old-school goof-punk and old-school goof-metal. And it works, to some extent, but the unbearable length (34 tracks!) makes Diarrhea a joke that carries on far too long. It’s scary, though, how obsessive it all seems. It’s one thing to make a joke about a girl shoving things in her rectum, experiencing painful bowel movements or a male urinating in the sex organ of a female - and PPR, hailing from Atlanta, explores all these themes on this album - but it’s quite another thing to make the same joke for 73 minutes. It’s more than likely a case of self-inflicted mental illness, of getting caught up in one’s own explorations, than evidence of any pre-existing condition. However, by either route, it still means these guys are sick.
The band operates in the tradition of Anal Cunt, Agoraphobic Nosebleed and, to a lesser extent, GWAR. It’s not like this stuff has never been sung about (see: G.G. Allin, The Mentors, etc.), but rarely has it been done with such a massive amount of eighth grade humor. As a live act, PPR may actually bring the rock to the point where their themes of ridiculously perverted sex and overly Freudian obsession with defecation are rendered minor in comparison with the music. If this is what Atlanta’s punk scene hath wrought, then let’s exhume Sherman and tell him to burn it real good this time.
Gordon LambRecord Reviews
Electric Six
originally published December 14, 2005
This album shouldn’t work. Electric Six’s last album, Fire, had a Jack White cameo and was an early, superficially mookish take on dance-rock that’s since been eclipsed both by the icier, retro dancepunk sound that came to dominate and that sound’s own apparent (temporary) irrelevance. So here the band is again with Señor Smoke, released overseas earlier this year, and the major changes are as follows: more lyrics (which tend toward the Beckishly nonsensical), and a heretofore unrealized knack for modern rock ballads.
Sounds mildly terrifying, but it works, helped along by three of the best songs of the year: the Crash Test Dummies-aping politics-as-pop-culture omnibus “Jimmy Carter,” closer “Future is the Future” which takes a series of surprising turns, and “Rock and Roll Evacuation,” for if nothing else its climactic line “Mr. President, I don’t like you / You don’t know how to rock!” If what comes between sounds a bit samey, that’s only a testament to its danceability, which is in full effect on disco bangers like “Dance Epidemic” and “Be My Dark Angel.”
It would have been easy for Electric Six to go all DFA, but the band admirably stuck with its old sound, which not only swings, but actually rocks, in contrast to the pasty emo-isms of your Bloc Parties and Futureheads. It’s a wonderful thing, and thank your lucky stars it’s finally getting a domestic release.
Michael Barthel Electric Six is playing at the EARL in Atlanta on Tuesday, Feb. 21.If you are having problems with the site, or have questions or suggestions, please contact us here. Thanks!
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