Carey Mercer babbles and yowls feverishly
as guitars rain down, blaring, in torrents. Yes, it's the new
Frog
Eyes album, and it treats the conventional rock song as nothing less
than the most nefarious of villains, worthy of ridicule,
disfigurement, and systematic disembowelment. And those grisly
sentiments are brashly carried out by these could-be-geniuses, as
shredded pop debris is buried under a tremendous heft of ragged
guitar, skronky keys, and cataclysmic percussion.
Although it has been broken into
'songs,' Paul's Tomb is more like one big-ass adventure cleaved into
nine parts, each one a momentous cavalcade of urgent, hideously
alluring chaos. As per usual, a large focus is directed towards the
interplay between Mercer's desperately swooping vocals (which
recall, remarkably, Gareth Liddiard's at their most intense) and his
and Ryan Beattie's expansive guitar work. From my vantage point, one
of the band's greatest feats is their ability to seamlessly fit
their music's various elements together – a formidable challenge
when one deals in experimental art-rock of this sort. On a track
like “Lear in Love,” for example, the troupe drape vocals over an instrumental
background that's constantly metamorphosing, swirling around
through meandering quiet moments and battered sheets of guitar.
It works.
However, the inevitable result of burning convention at the stake is
an inevitable hierarchy wherein atmosphere and dynamics typically
find themselves above populist notions like melody. Which, to
clarify, does not mean Paul's Tomb is bereft of hooks, only that its
carnal appeal must be gradually unearthed from beneath the squalor,
an effort which yields generous dividends upon multiple listens;
if you crave proof, consult the heroic vocal melody adorning the climax of “A Flower in
a Glove,” the burned-out chords amid “Paul's Tomb,”
and the
propulsive glory of call-to-arms “The Sensitive Girls.”
To put it mildly, the bulk of
Paul's Tomb is an
enrapturing vortex of sound– albeit one that requires a bit of
testing the water before one is able to comfortably bask in its
charms. With that said, at certain parts of this record the band is
guilty, perhaps, of taking their avant-garde leanings a bit too far.
On this front, I must single out “Styled by Dr. Roberts,” whose
whooping, effusive expansiveness threatens to wear the listener's
patience down, sitting as it does in the middle of an album built
entirely out of unapologetically expansive songs. Ultimately,
however, it's one of few minor qualms I have with Paul's Tomb;
surely, not every experiment is going to pull through with flying
colours, but overall, this record is a pretty victorious affair.
