Pay Toilets - Freedom Rock/Wet and Wild USA
(White Denim)
The old adage about bands of yore is always that "you had to see 'em live," and, while, for some, it's definitely true, it often seems as though the statement is sometimes used as an excuse for mediocre records, or the product of internal hyperbole on the part of the speaker. This can be said with conviction about Pittsburgh’s Pay Toilets, a band whose fury vinyl could never hope to fully capture. The excellent packaging and design of the multi-titled LP goes far to reflect the band's personality, as does the positively gross color of the one-sided LP's vinyl, but there's a sweaty, smelly magic to a Pay Toilets performance that just doesn't seem able to be found coming out of speakers or through headphones. This doesn’t cheapen, however, Pay Toilets’ debut, a suitably grungy slab of punk rock made the way it’s meant to be.
From the monolithic beginning of the anthem “Get Organized,” Freedom Rock/Wet and Wild USA tumbles through the matted fur on the underbelly of punk rock, eschewing the usual signifiers of punk rock for something more visceral and organic. Pay Toilets are body rock, like a bizzaro Slim Goodbody for punk music, putting on exhibit the rotting insides, seeping fluids, and clumpy wastes that lie inside the old man that is rock ‘n’ roll. There’s an undeniable Neanderthal charm to the simplistic aplomb of the trio, who are best when they’re at their dumbest, all energy and inertia. Vocalist/shaman/human projectile Jim Lingo is a purveyor of damaged poetry, socio-political commentary, and perverse pleasures, possessed by some evil that’s only driven out at the album’s conclusion in “That’s Exorcism, Pal.” Jeff Schreckengost’s guitar is a beautifully ugly distorted mess, all muscle, with no room in it’s punishing attack for any ornamentation. John Roman’s drums propel the songs with a restrained aggression, threatening to explode like the enraged hulk into an animalistic frenzy. The dumber the better, Pay Toilets uncouth upheaval takes punk back to the stone age and beats it with a rock. The results may not be pretty, but this lp’s still only a glimpse of what takes place when Pay Toilets let loose in a live setting.
|
