Ex Models - Zoo Psychology
(Frenchkiss)
New York City's Ex Models have only been playing together for just over two years, but the amount of glowing press the band has received is fairly impressive. Of course, being based in New York during a time in which man of the city's mediocre post-punk offerings are being lauded as the new thing by media outlets small and large alike can never hurt. The quartet garnered praise on both sides of the Atlantic, and though they had done a fairly good job at separating themselves from the majority of the NYC pack, the effusive compliments being laid upon them always seemed slightly exaggerated, as the group's spastic, trebly attack wasn't much more than a modern extension of Gang of Four's most clangily combustible work. What a difference a few minor alterations can make.
Zoo Psychology contains little in the way of sweeping revisions to Ex Models' sound, but does what it takes to catapult the band into a realm of their own, and a point at which all of the hyperbolic adulation becomes a bit more apropos. Though still reliant on thin, clamorous explosions of trebly guitar and borrowing generously from the sound of the first wave of post-punk pioneers, Ex Models have begun to strike out on their own path in order to define a sound all their own. Subtle use of modulation effects on the guitars, the occasional disregard for steady rhythms, and controlled explosions of energetic noise all combine to make the best moments on the album more than healthy atavism or a fresh look at an old sound. Vocalist Shahin Moita continues to yelp and coo in his falsetto style, but backed by the band's new, more inventively incendiary sound, his delivery comes off as less an aping of those who have come before and more an electric connection to the flashes of lightning contained within the music. This isn't to say that the group has completely forgotten their past; a chunk of songs in the middle of the twenty-one minute CD are a bit of a return to the sound formerly showcased by the group. But, when interspersed with the more individual and interesting songs on the disc, even this material is injected with a more powerful punch. We can only hope Zoo Psychology is a sign of further cultivation on Ex Models' part of a sound that will continue to justify the veneration of critics and fans alike and find them furthering themselves from the pack of NYC retro-rockers who may easily find themselves victims of the easily-distracted attention span of even the hippest sectors of the American mainstream in only a few years.
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