Featuring ex-members of Cajun Dance Party, who we never reviewed, but I can’t imagine we’d really have gone for either…
[Video][Myspace]
[2.93]
Josh Langhoff: The opening chord reminds me of the Gathering’s stellar blast-off tune “Liberty Bell”; the rest reminds me of what I always imagined Spacemen 3 would sound like before I actually heard them, and Mr. Yuck sounds like he’s singing in a tin can, so I first assumed this song had something to do with space travel. Now I’m not so sure. I mean, it’s certainly as monotonous as space travel must be, but you’d think real astronauts with time on their hands would come up with more adventurous guitar parts.
[2]
Chuck Eddy: Tar-like guitar blur going nowhere, mumbly vocals buried in the mix, tempo draggier than molasses in January, some loser whining “should I give in” attempting to contribute an emotional tug to the affair. Might have been half interesting a quarter-century ago, back before Dinosaur added their Jr., but don’t count on it. Nonetheless, as sleepytime background mulch, not entirely useless.
[4]
Doug Robertson: This is the sort of track that would probably sound great live, all bowel loosening bass with a constant throb that draws you in and won’t let you go, but outside of that environment it’s hard to shake off the feelings of self indulgence and it’s very easy to get distrac… Oh look, it’s snowing again!
[6]
Mark Sinker: Their “bovverd” will pretty quickly seed your “bovverd”, if this is a guide. Self-conscious anti-expressive sluggishness as a gesture of what? Laziness flirts timidly with pseudo-chaotic formalism — slowed-to-crawl feedbacked guitar rock — and you’re not even sad that you’re bored by stuff you were once intrigued by, because this only sounds a bit like that stuff by a kind of accident of (yes yes still non-existent) influence.
[2]
Zach Lyon: I can see this being enjoyed by a kid that’s never heard loud, sludging guitars and indecipherable lyrics. But it’s still been done, and done better enough to fill that musical void completely.
[2]
Martin Skidmore: I was tired of droning lofi indie a very long time ago. This lacks the pretty tunes and sheer attack of the Jesus & Mary Chain, ending up as something that plods along — for over seven fucking minutes — in a way that drains joy and excitement from the environment. I felt quite aggrieved that my sense of duty as a reviewer made me listen to the whole thing.
[1]
Jer Fairall: My 1993 as distilled to its sonic essence so perfectly that I feel I should be listening to it on my bulky yellow Sports walkman while biking to the mall to spend my allowance on a flannel jacket hilariously ill suited to the summer weather and a ticket to see Jurassic Park for the third time. As much of a sense memory for me as a song, admittedly, but at seven minutes, a generous yet surprisingly non-welcome-overstaying one.
[7]
Alex Macpherson: This is so lethargic that I can feel it leeching energy from my surroundings. It also feels unhygienic. Like falling asleep face down in mud.
[0]
Katherine St Asaph: There is nothing redeemable in this. Not the endless guitar groan, like a recording of someone shoving the Collected Shakespeare into a paper shredder. Not the moaning indie jackass who’s mixed hideously in, I guess, an attempt to mask his voice. Definitely not the video, with its porno-voyeuristic supercloseups of a woman washing her dog (and herself, because while we’re being creepy…) The headline on BBC’s blurb reads “Perfect Sound Forever”. We are in a dystopia.
[0]
Anthony Easton: Pressing the dogs anal gland, and the woman pressing her nipple, is so fucking deep. The height of art. Thank you, Yuck, for extending the women are bitches metaphors further then any rapper ever could. Also, the reason why Metal Machine Music worked was because of the absence of vocals, the reason Why holy Fuck works is because the guitar works in relation to the guitar noise. This is just pretentious sludge.
[0]
Iain Mew: There are enough shifts in texture amidst the big sludgy drifts of noise to prevent this from becoming too boring, but they’re not dramatic or deft enough to give it much function beyond neutral background drone, or to make it stick in the memory at all. Having first encountered the song together with its video, I could certainly tell you a lot more about the latter than the former.
[5]
John Seroff: Something of a wasted attempt to explore conflicting textures; when the vocals push against the dirge something interesting almost happens. Then it doesn’t.
[2]
Jonathan Bogart: Sinus-clearing rawk that lingers longer than it strictly needs to, but if you’re caught up in the feedback pulse you don’t mind. Score divided between listens when I was caught and when I wasn’t.
[6]
Tom Ewing: Slavish, over-cautious recreation of a sound — the dynamics, the timbres, the song structure, the voice — I never liked much at the time. As usual with this stuff, I find myself overrating the flashes of prettiness when they’re pushed through the bars of monotony like thin scraps of meat. For full verisimilitude they need to get a John Peel impersonator on at the end: “That was No.44 in your Festive Fifty, Yuck. And at 43, here’s one of Our William’s favourites…”
[4]