by David Wilikofsky
When I was thirteen years old, my mother signed me up for a ceramics class for the whole summer without asking. I was not thrilled. Despite being the child of an art teacher, I hadn’t been very artistically inclined up until that point. My drawing skills were never particularly sharp, and I wasn’t excited to dabble in a new medium. I showed up the first day ready to hate it, but quickly became entranced by throwing on the wheel. The process is a dance, a push and pull between you and a lump of clay. You develop a rhythm over time, learning to pull the clay upwards in defiance of gravity. I happily spent my whole summer (and many more after that) in the studio.
When throwing clay, the first part of the process is called centering; it’s the act of forcing an uneven mass of clay to become evenly distributed around the center of the wheel. It’s a constant push towards equilibrium, physically forcing the clay into a workable shape; it’s also a metaphor that works well to describe the music on Fast Edit. Drum, guitar and vocal parts circle each other, constantly locking into uneasy harmony only to break apart. Opener “Pleasures” is two minutes of dissonance, embracing the chaos completely. Each part moves at its own pace, meeting the others at seemingly incidental moments before going forward on its own path. “Do”, one of the early lead singles on the album, is built on top of two repeated guitar notes that ring out again and again throughout the track. There is a continuous subtle increase and decrease in the distance between the notes, causing the track to undulate. “Crreeaase”, likely the poppiest cut on the album, begins with a straightforward melody which disintegrates into a cascade of guitar noise before materializing again on the other end. This constant push and pull, in all its forms, is central to the album; it’s music constantly in motion, always moving forward without looking back.
Fast Edit is quite spare, with many songs are build on top of only a few notes and chords. There’s a physicality to the sounds the band elicit from their instruments. Notes are carefully placed and articulated; you can almost feel the guitar being plucked or drums being hit each time. Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach’s voice twists and turns, her vocals often drawn out to the point of abstraction. On “Shy Song”, for instance, they hover just below the surface of the mix, serving more as a textural element. When words and phrases pierce the surface, the intensity of their imagery is jarring. “I am wearing my skin / it keeps my venom in” she sings at the end of “Getting Murky”, extending each word for maximal emotional impact. Other lyrics explore relationships and desire, always landing with a punch at an unexpected moment.
I honestly can’t remember being so entranced by a “rock” album since Palm’s debut album Trading Basics, an album that shares a certain je nais se quois with Fast Edit. Both contain music that at first glance appears to be discordant but on closer examination reveals an incredibly complex rhythmic structure that only the tightest of groups can pull off. While Still House Plants certainly has avant tendencies (there are many moments that are more free improv than rock), a pop heart beats at the core of everything. It may take a few spins for the songs to click, but this is really something special. At the risk of being hyperbolic (I already tipped Duma’s self titled debut as one of the best records of the year a mere four days ago) when we look back at 2020 this is another album that will stand above the rest.