The new issue of Wire describes them as indebted to the roster of 1980s post-hardcore groups on Greg Ginn's SST label… embedding the full throttle melodies of Hüsker Dü and the Minutemen within Wolf Eyes-style noise and fractured electronic shards… the Phil Spectors of noise. Flux says on his blog that they write anthemic pop-punk tunes, but replace the standard textures and dynamics of the genre with warped keyboards, severe electronic effects, and wild, heavy, inventive drumming. The Pitchfork review is more cautious, underselling what's on offer with faint praise. I get the impression the reviewer wanted to throw his lot in and gush, but from his self-conscious opening line he's clearly skirting the edge just in case he feels the need to back off and disown them should the whims of fashion make his stance embarrassing.
I can see why. The Wire reviewer is probably correct in their locating of the band's influences, but to me they just don't quite grasp the full on effect of what it all means in practise. You see… Parts & Labor sound like '80s U2 and Simple Minds at their most bombastic and sloganeering. This feels like music aimed squarely at the stadium, but it's not just about stadium rock. With their overdriven keyboards, squiggly high end electronics and thunderous walls of noise they also evoke the euphoria of hands in the air blissed out rave mashed into Weingarten's relentlessly propulsive and inventive drumming. It's totally pop, totally punk, totally dance, totally stadium, noisy without being noise, joyous and unselfconscious, overdriven and revelling in the dynamics of sheer excess.
It's extremely hard to sell this band without making them sound like a ludicrous proposition. Pitchfork called it a *mature* album, but I'm not nearly convinced. There's something about Mapmaker that's just a little too good to be true… it's not that it doesn't work (it does emphatically)… it's maybe more that it seems to represent something that many of us have turned away from. Parts & Labor evoke many of those great old bands that many of us have given up on. They're heart on sleeve idealistic. Passionate.
To call a band *passionate* might instantly make you wince or cringe… but you'd rob yourself of one of the albums of the year so far. The more I listen to it the more I realise that any reservations are much more a problem with the listener and their own baggage, for example the combined effect of how I grew up with bands like Delirious making a caricature of U2's hard earned and genuinely effecting stadium sound while increasingly finding Bono's band becoming clumsy, losing quality control and abandoning their previously deft touch for sound sculpting, dynamic rhythm and triumphant melody in their latter years.
It's a revelation to for me to accept that I still want stadium rock. I'd forgotten how fucking awe inspiring it can be.
I want it to sound like Parts & Labor.
Want proof? Download Fractured Skies, the first tune off the album. Turn up the sound system far too loud. Enjoy how the beginning sounds so much like the start of Transformers: The Movie.
Then see what happens when the guitars kick in and tell me that they haven't earned that rush. |
