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DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY
If Meow Meow has one thing going for it — aside from the sharp
cover art and packaging of its soon-to-be-released Devil in the Woods
CD — it’s that you’re never quite sure what the band
is going to pull into the mix. Though the band’s a quartet, three
of the members rotate between vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, and
the all-encompassing “et cetera” and a handful of other
musicians appear on Snow Gas Bones, but this doesn’t even begin
to hint at the scope of the band’s textured sound. In one breath,
this is the harmony-fixated Beach Boys filtered through the guitar
triggers of mid-80s Brainiac, and in the next My Bloody Valentine as
recorded by Erik Sanko of Skeleton Key. One song’s a noisy ode
with a power-pop refrain that could put Weezer to shame, and the song
that follows it is a document of Malkmus fronting Eels. It can be bizarre.
But it also works.
The finest moments on Snow Gas Bones are the
ones that wrap themselves wholeheartedly around this lack of predictability,
that quiver with excitement at the prospect of leaving the listener
wondering where exactly they’re being led. The record has both bombastic and
subtle examples of this, the former being “Amaurosis,” which
wavers between a somber whisper with ominous keyboards and a reckless,
pummeling chorus where drummer/percussionist Norm Block pounds his
set ferociously at every turn. Then there’s “Sick Fixation” (the
Beach Boys-inflected single) and “The Killing Kind,” where
poppy bridges are more carefully undermined with deeply processed
guitars and noisy asides, the lines between quiet and loud, harmony
and dissonance subtly blurred.
The experimental leanings on these tracks are
inviting and seem to draw your ears to them like magnets, but it’s the structure
and sweetness of the songs — in short, their more conventional
verse-chorus-verse sentiments, recorded with precision and attention
to a sometimes commercial sheen — that’s the real star.
And there’s the rub. While many will listen to “The Killing
Kind” and point to its saccharine-sweet vocals or the three-part
harmonies (and they are most definitely worth noting), what should
be most intriguing about the material is its experimental edge. Meow
Meow, though, often chooses to assign those leanings a supporting
role, making the record a pop-rock document with experimental leanings
rather than an experimental rock document with pop leanings. It’s
more digestible to a wider set of listeners, but it can also underestimate
the strength of smart noise.
That being said, even when Meow Meow is playing
it straight with guitar-driven verses or making sure to sink the
hooks under the skin, the record is sharp and better with each
spin. “Finis” is
a great mood piece, a primordial mass of white noise and ambient
suggestions. “All I Ever Got” is pure, radio-ready album-oriented
rock, destined to be blasting out of some car window as it’s
cruising down an endless highway. “Amplified Breathing Apparatus” and “Wear
Your Down,” both with reflective endings, are frail and revealing
in a way much of the record is not.
Yeah, kids, Kirk Hellie’s guitar makes sounds and produces
textures you could never muster with your Fender tube amp and a couple
of pedals, but the record is about more than songs accented with
cute tricks. If, in the next round, Meow Meow becomes even more brazen
with its experimentalist/noise streak and leans less on the pop structures,
you may be knocked off your feet. For now, though, the band managed
to cook up a feast that toys with your expectations about how those
often-disparate elements — let’s call them snow and gas
and bones — can be reconfigured and presented as a complex
whole.
- Justin, 4/19/04
http://www.adequacy.net/reviews/m/meowmeow.shtml |
