REACTION:
Bells, whistles, thorns and thistles. Sticks in mud made splintered mud cakes by stomping boots at a rally of I HATE HATE. Vocals, dull rusted nails on your chinsy chalkboard, but at homely and awkward. Keep it tinny. Keep it earringy. Keep it KRS kinny. Niche fittingly focused, but let the swells sweep up, ever teeming whistles wet and bells struck. But like all practitioners of the off-white magic, it always pales in the end. Ears aren't directly connected to hearts. Recognition isn't even a start. Five senses and ones caught up in stale propensity for manic density and thin, smugly grinning. Kill us quiet or pick a new platform, not the norm is just the new way to conform. Kill us craven and culled from musty confines, make the words issue forth all sluggish like treeslime. Kill us in a row, wanna die suggestive, wanna die succinct, want nothing but a hefty heartsink. So far down it drowns in the bodystink. Head can't help but think. Head can't help but think. Hold me down and chalk it up. Everyone's a clown but can't yuk it up. Hold them down and chalk it up. Crash every party fine line and flail all over. Else I'll screed it: pass em over, pass em over.
TRANSLATION:
Rad title misleads curious music fan.
It's like GoGoGo Airheart (arty, chaotic, lo-fi rhythm and blues), but ultimately not as interesting. The "singer" sounds just like the yelper in GGG Airheart. Only not as shrill. And, oddly enough, this could be a significant part of what makes the Wilkes Booze singer less endearing. The jarring, sonic disruption via turntables, bells, singing bowl, electronics, Moog, transistor radio, autoharp, alto saxophone, gong is the only thing keeping me from dismissing this band's dull, half-assed blues progressions outright. Admittedly, things get kind of interesting come track nine, "Know Your Enemy pt.2." The track titles are colored white, while the previous are blue hued. Things get spacey and bizarre on the white side. "Can't Take It" slowly rumbles out of the gate like a more sinister version of "Riders on the Storm." But like almost all of the tracks (the download-worthy "Always Be There" being the exception) on here, the intrigue tends to dissipate. I can't tell if it's a desire, on the part of the musicians, for a rigid, simplistic sound or just a lack of melodic imagination. But there's something stagnant about this psychadelic soup. I mean, don't get me wrong, bassist Chris Barth plays the "hermetic research" exceptionally well, but it just can't save the overall tiresome nature of this recording. Rats! Sing! Sing! by The GoGoGo Airheart is coming in October. If past records by the group are any indication, it should be decidedly more worthy of your freak punktofunk dollar.
1. Gonna Die Tonight
2. War Drums
3. Cultural Hurricane
4. Know Your Enemy pt.1
5. Bernadine
6. Barker Ranch Blues
7. Always is Always Forever
8. Erasing Animals
9. Know Your Enemy pt.2
10. Always Be There
11. Word of Mark / The Rattler
12. Can't Take It
13. So Much Mahal
14. Heliocentric Views pt.2
More about: John Wilkes Booze
