Bride of No No - (II)
(Atavistic)
When Bride of No No's first album, BONN Apetit!, was released in 2000, the group appeared capable of making people forget about the break-up of Scissor Girls, bassist Azita "AZ" Youseffi's former project, which had come at a period of both great creativity and increasing visibility outside of their home of Chicago. BONN Apetit!, composed in a surprisingly agile and abstract derivation of classic rock language, seemed to be only the first offering in what seemed to be yet another feather in Chicago's already stuffed cap of forward-looking rock groups. But, after a few years of composition and live performances, the group dissolved. It was decided that the now defunct quartet would re-enter the studio with Jeremy Lemos, who had engineered their debut, to record the songs that they'd been performing live in recent months. Luckily, the album bears no sign of what must have been a somewhat awkward recording session, and it could easily be believed that the disc was recorded in far happier times for the band. Unfortunately, however, it isn't necessarily a document of a band at their creative height, either.
Bride of No No's debut was built around off-kilter rhythms and the unpredictable interplay of Azita's basslines with the guitars of J Gräf and M V Carbon. Azita's expressive, elastic, and gruffly alluring voice is still present in full force in their new material, and though the album finds her in a more subdued mood much of the time, her vocals are allowed to operate even further as an equal and different melodic instrument in the group's songs. An obvious change in the band's sound is present in the addition of piano, and instrument which Azita has played since her youth, and one that she melds fairly seamlessly into Bride of No No's sound, adding a meditative, relaxed quality to parts of the album. Carbon and Gräf's guitars, always fairly straightforward with regards to tone, have taken upon an even heavier, classic rock sound, one that tends to thicken the band's sound. The increased density of the guitars, however, and Lemos' production work, combine to render much of Azita's bass playing for too low in the mix, and it's changed from an equal member of the band's guitar triumvirate into a more supporting player, something that diffuses one of the band's strengths. What compounds this problem further is that the bass lines mimic the drums and fulfill a more strictly rhythmic role than on the last recording, giving Azita's playing a less of a distinctive sound.
No matter the complaints, Bride of No No are ultimately successful on their second disc, and whatever inconsistency or other complaints could be brought upon it don't make it unlistenable or even mediocre. The core ingredients that made Bride of No No what they were are still part of the mix; it's just a shame that this is the last we'll hear of the group.
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