Canon in Miniature #199

Poison Idea Pick Your King

1983; Fatal Erection

The thing that I keep coming back to on this EP is Pig Champion’s guitar tone. Not his riffs, those are standard issue hardcore to their marrow; fast as hell, not particularly flashy. The way those riffs sound, on the other hand, isn’t quite as standard. Rather than a thick, distorted tone akin to what most other bands of this genre would have dialed in, Pig Champion opts for something far brighter and cleaner. The combination of that tone and the riffs is enough to give Pick Your King as much individual character as any standard issue hardcore album has ever managed to possess in my opinion. Hardcore isn’t a very varied genre to my ears, not in that all the bands sound exactly the same so much as they all follow a distinct enough blueprint that it can feel restrictive to a fault, so hearing a band using the same general idea but tweaking the sound enough to prove my conception of the genre as being woefully under-informed is refreshing.

The thing is that beyond that tweak to the formula, Pick Your King is still a standard issue hardcore EP. 13 songs in 13 minutes, riff after riff after riff with only a few bass-led sections to break it up, vocals that sound a bit like Henry Rollins’ motor-mouthed younger brother, all played as fast as the members can handle. There’s not much else to it, and that’s a small issue for me. All of those qualities I listed above have their good and bad sides, and other than the small alteration to how one element of the band sounds relative to its peers none of the good sides are significant enough to let the contents stand as anything but minor variants on things you’ve heard before. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s an issue that I can’t exactly ignore either.

Oddly enough though, the one time that the band stretches itself far enough beyond that central sound that it’s immediately noticeable it makes for the worst moment on the EP. “(I Hate) Reggae” shifts awkwardly between lower-tempo faux-reggae sections and bursts of their usual brand of hardcore and it’s an obvious misstep that only serves to highlight just how well things were going up to then. It’s the only track that doesn’t wind up having a memorable riff too, as otherwise there’s always at least a flourish that Pig Champion adds to the songs that makes them easily distinguishable from each other. Take “Pure Hate” for example, where the guitar simply rides out one repeated chord while the bass establishes a melody, or the various times throughout the EP that the guitar abruptly shifts into a descending pattern in line with what little melodicism there is in the vocal line. These aren’t new and exciting ideas in hardcore or anything, but they do more than I’d have expected them to in terms of giving the individual tracks their distinct character.

The bottom line is that Poison Idea do enough right on their debut that I can’t help but like them more than I generally find myself liking bands of their genre. The songs may be short, fast bursts of righteous fury, but they’re also anchored by playing solid enough to make the minute or so that each track lasts long enough to showcase some well-developed riffs. The vocals match the intensity beat for beat, making Jerry A. sound absolutely driven in a way that his most obvious influence never quite managed. The subjects tackled here are nothing new, and A.’s take on them is nothing too outside the norm either, but the combination of the band’s playing and Jerry A.’s delivery of his lyrics – which as you might expect are compact packages of righteous fury – makes the material feel vaguely fresh in execution if not in conception. What it winds up boiling down to is that this EP feels better than its peers even if the contents themselves don’t seem to add up to anything more. It’s just a feeling but I’m going with it for now. [5.8]

Canon In Miniature #200

Deerhunter Fluorescent Grey

2007; Kranky

The appeal of Deerhunter, for me at least, has always been in their sound as opposed to their content. I’m not trying to belittle them as players and songwriters, and it goes without saying that Bradford Cox has (accidentally?) become one of this generation’s most interesting lyricists in the years since Turn It Up, Faggot, but when I think back to what made me slowly fall in love with Cryptograms it was the entire experience as opposed to the craft of any one element. I could try to recall specific riffs or lyrics that stood out, but mostly its power came from its sound; it’s not an album to sing along to but one to simply absorb without focusing on the distinct elements. I miss that angle on a lot of the band’s more recent albums. They’re all good, occasionally very good, but there seems to be more focus on the elements than the whole and that makes them feel ordinary where Cryptograms felt comfortingly alien yet familiar. Fluorescent Grey might have been the final vestiges of that era, and returning to it now makes me feel a bit nostalgic for the time when Cox and company were less intent on being remembered so much as being felt.

You can definitely hear the beginnings of the band’s evolution here though. It’s mostly in the way its mixed, with Cox’ vocals acting as a clear focal point a lot of the time as opposed to being on par with the rest of the band’s tableau, but there’s also the fact that their instrumental atmosphere is much less full sounding here. Sure the middle of the title track and the final part of “Wash Off” reach the same sort of swirling haze that engulfed the bulk of Cryptograms but elsewhere things sound a bit more…common I guess. Outside of Cox’ delivery, “Dr. Glass” especially sounds like the sort of track that you could easily attribute to any given indie band, making it feel a bit out of place at this point in the band’s career. If anything it’s the clearest indication of where Microcastle was heading while the rest of the tracks feel at least in part like Cryptograms throwbacks. It’s also the site of Cox’ most easily digestible lyrics up to this point, though I’m not as enamored of them as I am the less concrete images provided in “Fluorescent Grey” and “Wash Off.” Given that, as on Cryptograms the lyrics weren’t pre-written it’s odd that one of Cox’ stream of consciousness rants would come off as more polished than the others but that’s how it feels.

The rest of the material here is much more consistently successful in balancing the band’s atmospheric and newly ascendant pop sides, especially the two longer cuts that bookend the EP. “Fluorescent Grey” hinges on repetition, both in Cox’ mantraic ‘patiently, patiently’ chant and in the simple metronomic riff that he and guitarist Locket Pundt lock into early on, and when that repetition is broken by an explosion of color halfway through the track it’s as exciting a moment as the band have been responsible for up to now. “Wash Off” might be even more successful with its much more involved riff and the hint of an actual story to its imagistic lyrics.  “Like New,” meanwhile, is a bit like the less noted tracks on Cryptograms – I’m specifically reminded of something like “Strange Lights” – in that it doesn’t seem to be anything special on its own but as part of the experience it’s pretty neat sounding. It’s probably the most psychedelic sounding track here too, strengthening its ties to the preceding album’s tone like none of its compatriots here.  The fact that the four tracks here have their own distinct identities as opposed to just feeling like parts of a greater whole – Cox described them as being four singles and that’s pretty accurate – is probably the biggest difference between it and its immediate predecessor, but that’s not a bad thing by any stretch, especially when the songs are as relatively strong as these four are.

What strikes me most about Fluorescent Grey, both as a standalone document and as part of the Deerhunter discography, is how confident the band sounds. For all its great points, Cryptograms definitely sounded like a band finding its footing while still being a hugely entertaining listen. Fluorescent Grey is tighter, more assured and possesses the sort of swagger that bands get when they finally feel as good as people say they are. Listen to the way that “Fluorescent Grey” works itself into a frenzy out of a metronomic two-note riff, or the way that “Wash Off” builds itself off of a similarly static pattern into an unsettling. These are the moves of a band that’s found their sound and solidified it to the point where it can be established quickly with each new song and stretched to fit each one like a glove. This isn’t my favorite Deerhunter album, but it’s definitely the first one where they’ve shed the uncertainty that accompanies most young bands. Even if it was that uncertainty that made them special at first and they lost a bit of character in the process, the trade-off wasn’t exactly for nothing. [7.6]