by David Wilikofsky
When I first heard that Editrix was releasing a full length, I was excited. If you’re a reader of the site you’ll know that we’re huge fans of Wendy Eisenberg, and the prospect of getting the first rock album from them since the demise of Birthing Hips was an enticing prospect. This time Eisenberg teamed up with Josh Daniel (of Landowner, one of the best rock bands operating today) and Steve Cameron. Would the results resemble the deconstructed avant-rock that Eisenberg made in the past? The twitchy, angular post punk of Landowner? The punk metal of Cameron’s other project, Tortured Skull? The answer is none of it and all of it. On Tell Me I’m Bad, the trio turns out some of the most exciting and twisted rock music you’re likely to hear this year.
The band describes their music as “avant butt-rock”, a term that feels at once deeply appropriate and overly simplistic. There are plenty of simple pleasures to be found in the bands’ metal riffs and virtuosic guitar solos; hell, “She Wants To Go And Party” even features a delightful Black Flag-esque chorus. But there are also complex things happening musically. The guitar and drum parts on “Sinner” drift intentionally out of sync, giving the track a sense of discomfort while bringing to mind the rhythmic experiments of Bud Powell as much as anything in rock. Most tracks twist and turn, each a Frankenstein monster moving from hard riffage to knotty guitar passages and back again without the band breaking a sweat.
Lyrically, the band is both serious and silly. On one end of the spectrum is lead single “Chelsea”, a track that explores the power structures of today’s world and the fallacy of “ethical consumption”. On the other is “The History of Dance”, which is literally a song about how fun it is to dance. Other tracks split the difference between the two; there’s something both hilarious and scary about the increasingly personal and obsessive questions of “Chillwave”, whose narrator is anything but chill. It’s the same type of dark humor and clever writing that made Eisenberg’s Auto an instant favorite.
Some of the songs on this album will be familiar to fans of the band; “Instant”, “She Wants To Go And Party” and “Taste” all appeared on their debut EP Talk To Me. Listening to them side by side, it’s apparent the huge leap forward this album represents. There was a lo-fi charm to Talk To Me, but this record brings a more polished sound. There’s a crispness to each instrument that helps highlight the complex arrangements and virtuosic playing along with a stronger sense of dynamics; the band explodes behind Eisenberg on “Instant” where they just joined in before. It’s a record that gives me the clearest sense of the band’s sound and vision to date, one that pushes hard rock into adventurous territory. It’s a stellar debut that makes me excited for their future.