Atombombpocketknife - God Save the ABPK
(Southern)
The music on Atombombpocketknife's first album was a refreshing change from the largely wimped-out emo music that was being churned out at the time. Even the cover of the album stood out, an attack helicopter flying through waves of fire; finally, a new rock and roll band that wasn't afraid to get aggressive and noisy. Now, after their second and next full length album, God Save the APBK, the band is already starting to stagnate. It's like they had an image and style they wanted to try, and now that they've done that, they're done being creative. How many war words can you use before you run out, how many war-based album covers can you have, and how much can you sound like Sonic Youth before BMI starts to leave messages?
Don't get me wrong, their new album, God Save the ABPK, has the requisite amount of rock and roll to be an enjoyable listen, and there is a major change on this album from the first one: the addition of Che Arthur on second guitar, expanding the band from three to four. However, this change seems to do more harm than good, for the time being. Their reasoning behind the addition is to allow one guitar to add "texture" while the other guitar plays all the riffs and progressions. (Someone call Sonic Youth, they can retire now.) The album seems to capture the band at an uneasy and uncertain time, between when they were set in their ways as a three piece and when they can be sure of what they want to do as a four piece.
Much of God Save the ABPK shows the band trying out what they can do as a four piece, trying very simple and straightforward ways of adding in a guitar for texture. In most songs, there is no interaction between the texture and the other band members, no one plays off the texture or really even acknowledges it is there. It is just there. There is a big lack of the symbiosis that you find with a confident, tight band. Several very good songs stand out on the album, but you soon realize that these songs don't make much of a use of the second guitar; these are songs made for the Unwound-style post-punk power trio of the band's first album.
The album starts off with two of these great songs. "A Room Full of Perfect People" gives a big burst of energy to start the album, with shards of noisy guitar thrown at your ears to start off the album. The song makes great use of tension and release, both in small and large intervals. During the verses, the guitar alternates between a fluctuating higher pitch and a chopping low pitch, creating an unnerving feeling that is expanded upon on the later instrumental section which build up the tension further with explosions in volume and density of sound over long spans of time. The ante is upped by the next song, "Like a Laser," though, which throws out about as many violent and war-based images as possible over great-sounding guitar tones.
After these two great songs, though, much of what is left ends up being anywhere from mildly interesting to all out boring. It's hard to add a second guitar to your band, kids; God Save the ABPK is proof of that. Only so much space can be stored in a 44.1 kHz sample rate, and if a second guitarist is sitting there making subtle whirring or shrieking sounds, it means the main guitarist can't be as powerful. And that is exactly what happens on too much of this album. The second guitarist is making some texture, and the lead guitarist ends up playing something less than explosive. With no explosions, the band's first album would likely have been too dull, and God Save the ABPK is no different.
It's hard to be hard on a band like Atombombpocketknife who are good enough to make a great sound and more than a few good songs. However, this album just seems poorly timed. The extra guitar could make the band even better eventually, pushing out their already great sound as they figure out how to combine the four instruments. However, that just doesn't happen enough here; the new guitar ends up hurting more songs than it helps on this album.
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