33 rebellions per minute
"Glad I'm wearing my head around my neck to avoid confusion"
1997
Linoleum, DISSENT
DISSENT is one of those debuts, like NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS or PRETTY HATE MACHINE or U2's BOY, that invents and quite thoroughly explores a narrow, distinct style. This does not bode well for Linoleum's follow-up, since the historical conclusion is that it will be, in my eyes, an uninspired, transitional mess (PUBLIC IMAGE, BROKEN, OCTOBER), but luckily that's not what I'm writing about. DISSENT is brittle power-trio rock distinguished by Caroline Finch's clipped, hyper-articulate vocals (Justine Frischman of Elastica sounds like this, but in comparison seems slurred); Sleater-Kinney chord patterns; and a somewhat minimalist insistence on playing as few different notes as possible, as many times in a row fast as possible, records being 68 straight of one note by the bass of "Ray Liotta", and 61 of one note of guitar on "On A Tuesday". That this works is, I suspect, partly good luck, and partly because if the guitar and bass move at different times to different notes, a primitive counterpoint is driven into your skull as the song progresses.
Every song does something just a little bit different from the others. "Marquis" uses the guitar to simulate ticking clocks and divingly tuneful scrapes of metallic fingernail
across blackboard. "Dissent" sets a snare-drum march, and uses thick guitar harmonics to imply melody, a trick also used in "Twisted", where the slow buildup features guitar strings that desperately need to be oiled. "On A Tuesday" mostly abjures chords for single notes. "Restriction" is the nearest to a normal melodic rock song, of the thickly guitared "dreampop" school (Swervedriver, Ride), then tails off into tortured pitch bends and, most excitingly, the sort of sculptured feedback whine mastered by the Wrens. "Ray Liotta", which also authorizes a real vocal melody but cuts it off before it gets too dangerous, could fully pass for a Wrens song: the feedback passing as extra layers of instrumentation, the regular guitar itself nonexistent behind a wall of bass and drums. "She's Sick", more dreampop, is the most repetition-prone song yet, only it keeps detouring briefly into a second note in midline; the syncopated, staccato bass/ voice break is a different Wrens trick. "Beds" is decorated with the sound of rayguns blazing away at a screeching elephant in the bottom of a cistern-- and no, I don't know how Linoleum got that past the Animal Rights folks. "Smear", fierce and blunt, decorated with early New Wave keyboards, is for me as elemental a guitar-rock song as 1997 produced, as vital and central in its For Your Own Good hostility as the Boo Radleys' "What's In The Box?" in its tumbling exuberance or the Leslie Spit Treeo's "Chocolate Chip Cookies" in its ringing buoyancy.
"Dangerous Shoes", "Stay Awhile", "Unresolved", and Ether" are all slow and pretty and, mostly in 3/4 time.
"...Shoes" has hollow, echoey drums, a slow feedback solo, and the swaying motion of a gust-blown sailboat; "Stay..." is a genuine waltz, as opposed to simply sharing that time signature; "Ether", with hints of the soundtrack of a John Ford western, and what may be an electric mandolin, stars the intriguing and quite detectable trick of creating a tremolo by running the fingers very very fast between two notes for three minutes, instead of using a tremolo pedal.
Which is as many tricks for this particular lineup as _I_ can think of, anyway. The intelligent lyrics mostly plow an even narrower field, painting a completely depressing view of romance: "We can sit here not moving, hardly talking, not alone". "Life's too slow, so you run away". "I heard tonight you wanted to know me/ then I knew it muse be a Friday/ it's been a while since we were last wasted/ funny how you never call on a Tuesday".
What _is_ it with this chick? She's this bright, she can't spend the night reading a good book? My favorite lyric, actually, is the creepiest, "Smear", which attacks a dying person for refusing to be angry and pained (and which, when my girlfriend started singing Space's "Me and You Vs. the World" at me in a goofily sentimental mood, left my brain stuck helplessly on "There's something moving under your skin, I saw it creeping in there/ it leaves a black and dirty trail, you will not recover", which I decided not to sing back). "Smear" has three entire chords to choose amongst, and four vocal notes, enough to strain most any singer except Caroline beyond successfully articulating "You must have vaseline on your lens! Do you see everything in freeze-frame?". But for Linoleum, everything-- chord, vocal phoneme, equipment overload-- is exactly placed, direct, and if harsh, elegantly so. And, for now, original.
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