Eyesore mp3 Women, Public Strain… pre-order here and with both LP and CD pre-orders there will be delivered with a bonus 7” featuring two exclusive non-album tracks – “Grey Skies” and “Service Animal”, not available anywhere else.
Art Rock: a genre title that gets thrown around to describe bands like Women, when in reality people are simply trying to come to grips with the fact that this is music that is to be listened to as an album, and you can’t dance to most of it. You can’t pick a track out and call it a pop single. Well, of course you could, but the project itself makes sense as a whole. Please don’t put one of these songs in a mixtape. I mean, go ahead if that’s the only way I can get you to buy the album, but you’ll be doing yourself a real disservice. Sit down with a pair of quality headphones and soak up this album, as an album. It’s a real treat.
Is it experimental? Maybe. Do parts still sound like “sunny Beach Boys pop was dragged into a dark alley and gleefully mutilated?” as Mary Christa O’Keefe wrote. Yes. And those are the interesting bits of this melange of songs. What’s less interesting is that they seem to end up being quite melodic despite themselves. God knows, we don’t need any more stoner anti-indie rock. The hipster quotient is growing as any of us in urban areas already know. Stoner, anti-hipsters are right around the corner! They seem to be infiltrating every neighborhood these days. I’m even running into their skinny jean-clad selves in Streeterville! Where are they getting that kind of money? Indie has indeed gone mainstream. But experimental music will never make that cut. And Women still have enough of the “we really don’t know what we’re doing” spirit in them to pull this off. Namely, they’re not making hit singles… yet. Whew!
With dispassionate vocals, ears attune naturally to the instrumentation in most of these eleven songs. The sounds of clanging pipes, bells, hypnotizing guitar and bass lines all seemingly belie the fact that the pop music form is central to the songwriting on this album: chorus to verse, to chorus with an extended intro and/or outro. We like that about music. It’s familiar to us and even when faced with new and unexpected sounds, the format comforts us. Women use this to good effect. Songs like “China Steps” which start out on the challenging side of most people’s listening taste, end easily in familiar, melodic territory. Others, “Locust Valley,” “Eyesore,” and “Venice Lockjaw” are just pleasant through and through. Well, if you don’t pay mind to the lyrics (which are difficult to make out anyway but seem to range from dark to depressing to inane.) The stretch from “Narrow From The Hall” to “Penal Colony” and “Bells” is a grim one. Don’t start there, remember this project has a trajectory. By far, my favorite parts of this are the first two tracks and especially the way they segue from one to the next. The swirling of strings in “Can’t You See,” as that bass line is plucked so decisively against the misty vocals is just genius. And as it fades out, it screeches gently like an abandoned playground apparatus until the mellow, clear notes of “Heat Distraction” pick up. This band is often described as being in the vein of a famous band from the late 70′s, This Heat, a band that has influenced perhaps more bands than we can trace. And, aptly titled, it is this song, “Heat Distraction,” that is most like them, with syncopated breaks and a truly disjointed feel. I like to imagine that Women are paying them homage in this. But let the comparisons end there. Let Women evolve into the indie band they will be, and let us remember This Heat for it’s incredible production standards, it’s innovation, and it’s true avant garde, experimental origins. Women have much to offer from this album in a live show, I can’t wait to hear what they do with it.
See Women on tour with Liars this fall. By the way, Liars blew me away at Pitchfork Fest last month, these two bands together is going to be a hell of a show!
Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!