I’m
going to let you all in on a little secret that some people know about but not
everyone does. Press releases about
bands are dumb and I never read them.
Here is why: Press releases
accomplish one of two things. Either
they tell you, “This band is going to be the next Beatles!” and then when you
listen to it you say, “Ummm… no”, but you might have liked them had not their
expectations been built up so high. Or,
they tell you that the band is recommended if you like some other bands and you
end up feeling like while you do like those bands you’re just not feeling their
band.
So
I really don’t read press releases about bands I intend on reviewing. Ever.
(Though press releases on bands I don’t care about are hilarious and
should have their own review site dedicated to them) The exception to this rule now is that
when Hal McGee says to read something about this cassette when reviewing it,
you read it. And I did. But as it turns out it was about cleaning
your cassette deck properly rather than anything to do with Walls of Genius
specifically, so HA! I will still never
read a press release on accident and I refuse to be recommended if I like
something else.
If
you’ve made it past those two paragraphs of nonsense (It was a nice story, but
did it really need to be told?) you will
hopefully find yourself listening to this cassette from Walls of Genius. The first thing that I need to officially
say about it is that this stretches across a ninety minute cassette and it uses
all ninety minutes of it. When was the
last time you listened to ninety minutes of music? I don’t know either, but this is awesome in
its perhaps overwhelming girth.
Through
steady rocking beats there are literally bells and whistles coming out as
well. Sometimes the songs have this
quality of being standard rock quality but only in the sense that they fit a
certain time frame, yet other times they seem to extend for longer periods of
time such as a jam band would create and that’s how this becomes so long but it
totally works and never seems to tire.
There
are vocal expressions that aren’t always words, though it can also take on the
life of a band like Oingo Boingo.
Really though it’s not something you can compare with someone else as
much as it being the inverse of another band perhaps. It could be considered a weirder version of
The B-52’s (who are already weird enough) or even like an original Weird Al song. There are organ glitches, sharp feedback and
yet also a ton of melody.
The guitar riffs and cowbell work together to
create this rhythm that has the driving quality of a surf song though it is not
surf exactly and it just plays in this seeming loop that just becomes catchy as
hell and you can easily get it stuck in your head: though keep in mind your
humming the notes and singing any words, which is perhaps even more
remarkable. The song “Beer Beer Beer”
brings out a bluesy riff and somehow there is also just this long passage of knobs
being twisted.
Perhaps
the best thing that can be said about Walls of Genius is that their music is in
fact genius. Here you have a good number
of noises and sounds that shouldn’t really be melodic or catchy and yet that is
still my overall feeling of this cassette and what I take from it at the
end. (Even with their spirited rendition
of “All My Loving”) When you think about
and write about what is going into the making of these songs you shouldn’t have
them stuck in your head throughout the day afterwards, but it’s what
happens.
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