|
|
|
BANDS: Punk
& Ska INTERESTS: Venues ETC... About
LOTD
|
Complicated
Shirt: Strigine
Being a proud resident of hipper-than-thou Brooklyn, New York, and an enthusiastic fan of much of the music being made here, you can imagine my dismay when reading the following overstated line in the Complicated Shirt bio: Forget the past few years of corporate-carved garage rock, The Strokes, and the endless march of The band zombies tramping out of Brooklyn with their canned retro-rock and calculated five-oclock shadowed stares. . . . Well, to be fair, that statement isnt too far off from the truth in spots. A lot of piss-poor garage rock has been sold to the masses recently, and I guess we New Yorkers can indeed blame The Strokes for misleading the rest of the world into thinking they represent the best of the best our city has to offer. But for the members of Complicated Shirt not to know the reality of our scene and yet come off so assured and cocky is a bit bothersome right off the bat. Their bio continues, Albany, NY trio Complicated Shirt has re-discovered an intensely raw, home-recorded garage sound that trumps all the poseurs. They then go on to compare their guitarist/singer to some of New Yorks all-time greats, including Richard Hell and Lou Reed. Talk about setting yourself up for a fall. But it is said that one should give credit where credit is due, and thats a reasonable bit of advice, so Im going to do just that: the ten-track Strigine isnt half bad. There are quite a few tunes on this disc that, with repeated listening, work themselves under your skin. The previously mentioned singer/guitarist, Drew Benton, pulls off some terrific fingerboard runs that do bring to mind Television; although the overall feel of Complicated Shirt is entirely different from that late-70s entity. Bentons voice sets much of the tone here, and it sounds rather similar to And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Deads lead singer: harsh, screamy/nasally, and often heavily colored by an overdrive or distortion pedal. While initially grating, it fits the vibe Benton is going for and exhibits in its lack of refinement an honesty that this reviewer appreciated. Bentons desire to be a garage god notwithstanding, the strongest tracks are the somewhat sweeter ones, such as And Ill Use My Last Wish whose chorus repeats, And Ill use my last wish so I can know, / that on and on and on it goes and Centripetal Pills, a sarcastic, yet solemn ditty about how you cant sing along to the sound of no fun, / and the inevitable alienation of everyone. But there are other tracks (such as the opening Pitch Doctor Slogan, The Sound of the Sirens, and the closing The Lowest Blow) that, despite hard-charging attacks and hooky guitar riffs, come up empty. In the case of the first one especially, an overburdened attempt at lyrical wit plays a big part in the tunes downfall. Again, I will give credit where its due and admit that Benton uses a bigger vocabulary than most rockers and comes up with entirely unexpected rhymes, but often the sentiments hes trying to express are pedestrian and stated too literally. An example: Pitch doctor bitch, the talent abyss, / autotune your soul till it doesnt exist, / (ineffably vacuous abysmal piece of shit). Other times, his labored, flowery style takes away from the impact some of his musings might have had. Still, the bottom line is that Strigine has several strong tracks and Bentons guitar playing and voice often make for a compelling union. But is this such an intense speaker-shaking experience that it trumps all the poseurs and arrives at a strange new destination lying somewhere between Dinosaur Jrs wall of guitar buzz and Richard Hells verbal bite, as the bands bio claims? No, not in the least. Even at its best, this is far from being a boundary-pushing or even revelatory-return-to-roots release. Its really not much different than what plenty of other bands are currently doing. In fact, Ive heard a lot of stuff thats better right here in Brooklyn.
This album can be purchased at the Complicated Shirt Official Website About LOTD Contact/Staff Advertise Home All content © LEFT OFF THE DIAL 2001-2005. All rights reserved. |
