If the Neumu Web site could accommodate it, this review
would have a fluctuating rating, the little darkened
squares pulsating like an LED display. This is because
this L.A.-based trio's debut album has an uncertain
tone, a changeability which leaves it at one moment
sounding limp and uninspired, then in the next
suddenly coalescing into something far more appealing.
Singing drummer (or is that drumming singer?) Gena
Olivier holds a steady rhythm while giving it her best
Nico voice; the immediate touchstone is a sort of
more rough-and-ready Stereolab, complete with
semi-detached delivery and bleating space-age
keyboards filling in the gaps left by the band's two-guitar-and-drums lineup.
But beyond superficial
similarities there's a compelling grittiness to Midnight Movies, brought out by the tendency of twin
guitarists Larry Schemel and Jason Hammons to lay
swathes of noisy, rock-centric riffing over the
otherwise glacial surface of these songs.
The singles "Persimmon Tree" and "Mirage," while to
some degree representative of the band's sound, come
across as pretty bland fare in the context of the
album as a whole. Better are the earthy grooves of
"Love or a Lesson" (where the drumming's actually more
of a Meg White pounding than a smooth, motorik pulse),
the intro to "Oh Twilight," which sounds like a version
of "Iron Man" being played in a futuristic space
station's departure lounge, and the insistent thrust
of "Just to Play," which builds from a tense John
Carpenter-style start into a gripping, guitar-led
series of peaks. Elsewhere the band doesn't quite
manage to reconcile its mannered appropriation of a
distanced, underground frigidity with its boisterous
forays into abrasive, psych-tinged garage rock, but
this is probably a good thing, because it's this
resistance to homogeneity that gives them the sort of
edge they'd otherwise lack. Whether they continue to
be able to tread this fine line without giving in to a
full-blown identity crisis remains to be seen; in the
meantime the more vivid songs on this album are
definitely growers, justifiying some perseverance with Midnight Movies. |
