The one-sheet type write-ups for Azita's recent own-name outing
seemed to imply — with "former leader of Scissor Girls and Bride
of No No" phraseology — that Bride of No No was dead and buried,
and that AZ's bizarre pseudo-'70s-radio-ish piano ballads were
wailing on the grave of her most recent rock-'n'-roll band. A new
disc from said combo throws much doubt on such semantic assumptions,
especially when said disc is filled with as much life as anything
Azita has offered in her checkered/stickered/acclaimed "career" thus
far. Coming three years after the Bride of No No debut — the
mighty-uptighty/highly-wound B.O.N.N. Apétit! —
this second, self-titled album for the Chicago-based combo has been
highly influenced by what Azita has been doing outside the band.
Where the first record ran with the sharpened no-wave screech of the
Scissor Girls and gave such spastic rhythming a sense of muscular
structure, there is little in the way of such wrung-out repetition on
show here. As could be expected, this gear feels like it clocks in
closer to the singer/songwriter shtick of Azita's recent
Enantiodromia disc. She, indeed, favors her newly-discovered
grown-up wail over the ear-shredding screams of her Scissor Girl
youth, and, then, in ways close to her new solo ways, the erstwhile
no-wave maiden goes as far as sitting down at the piano in some key
minor-key moments. The band, too, has shifted to follow suit. Where
so much of that debut disc was banged out in super-tight fashion,
here, Bride of No No are happy to let things get a little bit ragged;
"Proven Formula" strays far from formula as it lurches along in a
languorous mid-tempo stride, stumbling to go with Azita's capricious
assault out front. The result is like a vestige of past-toned
drug-rock utopia as some out-of-it broad wails away over the
scruffiest of rock-band rock. In such, it's obvious that AZ's
staunchly strident no-wave past has mellowed into a more amiable
rock-'n'-roll now. That initial impression makes this second BONN
record seem, on first spins, to be a lesser Azita effort; but, just
like Enantiodromia, there's an uneasy quality about it that
begs further investigation. And subsequent spins reveal whole worlds
of incongruous wonder in wait for your surrender.
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