Parts and Labor - Groundswell
(JMZ)
Often when it feels to me that a band is derivative, I feel it from the very start. The first few songs are a clear indication of where the style and most of the ideas are flowing from. Seldom do I hear a band and then a month or so later decide, "Hey maybe these guys aren't that original." Parts & Labor perhaps have fallen into this category. Upon first listen, all I could think was, "Wow, these guys have made a really fucking intense album here." In the post-Lightning Bolt haze, I took their blend of aggro-prog pounding and wave-y but free but obtuse keyboards as some sort of new sound I hadn't heard before. However, after much reflection, Parts & Labor don't seem as new to me anymore. Looking way back in the past to maybe 3 or 4 years ago, I remember the pre-dreamboat era of Trans Am and how they merged a love of Van Halen and AC/DC with the post-rock intelligentsia of the time. If I put an album like The Surveillance and Parts & Labor's debut Groundswell side-by-side, I think they'd coexist pretty cozily. So the question then becomes, since Parts & Labor aren't creating a new sound—like I once thought they were—are they still fucking intense? The answer is "yes." This album is still fucking intense, even when it's so easy to compare it to an album I was all over only a few years ago. Perhaps this comparison is benefited by the fact that the era of Trans Am that Parts & Labor most reminds me of was their worst conceived, worst produced era. To put it more bluntly, Groundswell kicks The Surveillance's ass. It is just so fucking intense that it rips your speakers a new asshole and then messes around with the cone and wires so that the sound is now funneled through that asshole, creating a sound that is dirtier, harder, and noisier. Bass sounds crush down on top of you, and keyboards squawk and tweet like birds converging on stale bread. Like Lightning Bolt before them, the sound here is more punk than post-rock ever was, and Groundswell rocks more than Trans Am has in quite a few years—maybe more than they ever did.
|
