33 rebellions per minute
"holding back the outsides to take what I can get"
© 1997 bokonin@hotmail.com
2000
Longwave, ENDSONGS
It's nice to find some unique compliment for any given album, and I do have one for ENDSONGS: I think the miking and mixing job on the drums is absolutely fantastic. Not that Jeremy Greene is an unusual drummer (even the remarkably catchy "BOOM, ti! BOOM, ti! THUDTHUDTHUD" pattern on "Make Me Whole" is no big technical deal); I just would happily use this CD as a demo for what cymbals, kickdrums, and woodblocks should _sound_ like. I'm also very enchanted by Shannon Ferguson's guitar sound and Steve Schiltz's voice, but in an easier-to-define way. Ferguson sounds like he's been playing along to THE JOSHUA TREE, THE BENDS, and MARQUEE MOON for years, and Schiltz sounds as if some naturally average/earthy singer -- Frank Black of the Pixies, say -- had spent all his expensive voice lessons imitating Thom Yorke (Radiohead)'s every angelic mannerism.
Longwave, whose debut can be ordered from CDBaby, strike me as natural popularizers, like Travis if I actually liked their THE MAN WHO commercial breakthrough. Longwave have, on their debut, mastered the romantic longing and vague "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" idealism of U2 or Radiohead; but without cluttering the soundwaves with Johnny Greenwood's gleefully ghastly bass sputtering or Brian Eno's egghead synthesizings. "Escape" opens the disc in essentially the mode of Oasis's flip power-pop, except sounding weighty on production alone. The guitar eighth-notes that open "Best Kept Secret" flutter like "Fake Plastic Trees" caught in a gentle but erratic breeze, and the clean, compressed bursts of feedback and kickdrums that fuel the chorus harness Schlitz's panicked-angel vocals into a structure more mainstream, like Big Country's "One Great Thing" or Julia Darling's "Bulletproof Belief". "Pretty Face" remakes "High And Dry" for sneering on the verses, cuts "Just (You Do It To Yourself)" into an blunt Everclear stomp on the chorus, and breaks into a skilled guitar solo worthy of Tom Verlaine. "Something"'s glissandos and wafting synthesizer double-whole-notes suggest a fourth song for JOSHUA TREE's opening troika, with some 1995-style crunch and hints at theremin for distinction.
"Crushed Down And Faded" opens aggressively on fast, pounding repetitive bass notes, and melodically suggests the desperate punk song that "Wonderwall" becomes when the girl's support fuction has acquired the dependency of "It's only when I'm with you/ that sometimes I forget/ kicking back the outside world/ to take what I can get/ It's the way you move your body/ a pleasant cold release/ it makes me think it's dirty/ when I'm on my knees". "Make Me A Believer"'s sinister bassline is joined by badly-oiled swingsets attempting to sing like the crickets they spend the night with, and the song as a whole reminds me pleasantly of For Squirrels, a sadly obscure alt-rock band Longwave probably are _not_ influenced by. "Brighter Than Time"'s pedal steel and accordian and gentle waltz-time never acquire the melodrama to be mistaken for Travis's "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" or U2's "Red Hill Mining Town". "Crash" and "Make Me Whole" distinguish themselves on their whooshing headlong guitar phasing; "Ending" is a bleary countrified waltz.
U2 abandoned their atmospheric Americana as fast as they could; Radiohead followed their hits with the densest, coldest, most alienating album they could conjure (granting OK COMPUTER actually turned them into superstars). Bands that change the musical world have a way of moving on into newer, less accessible realms, just assuming the voids they happen to leave will be politely filled by other bands. Goodness knows, it's safe to assume that other bands will try, lured by profit or fandom or the simple desire to still find available recording-studio funding. What is less safe is the assumption that the imitators will have enough talent to move in _properly_. Longwave may turn out to have ideas of their own; I can't tell yet. But in the meantime, sometimes I'd rather have the comfortable, settled contours of the Radiohead and U2 styles, than the restless explorations of the founders themselves. Longwave do that, and they sound great. Especially the drum kit.
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