11-27: Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain
11-20: Wooden Wand and the Vanishi...: The Flood
10-02: ...: Oboroed/Circus Live...
07-04: Need New Body: Where's Black Ben?
04-09: Caribou: The Milk of Human Kindness
10-13: Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse
10-13: Things Explod...: It's Never Worked Befor...
10-03: Controller.Controller: History
Music Reviews index


11-09: Three...Extremes
10-19: Battle Royale II
10-04: A History of Violence
08-26: Grizzly Man
08-22: The 40 Year-Old Virgin
08-12: The Dukes of Hazzard
08-05: The Devil's Rejects
08-03: The Island
Movie Reviews index


01-06: List: Best/Worst of 2005: Movies
08-28: List: 2004's 50 Best Albums, Part 2
07-02: List: 2004's Best and Worst Movies
04-20: Article: Mikel Ate That CD
04-20: Interview: Half of the Fiery Furnaces
04-17: List: 2004's 50 Best Albums, Part 1
04-08: List: 2003's 20 Best Albums
Features index


Struction: Struction
Struction
Struction
NFI: April 06, 2004

67


Struction are kind of like if Lightning Bolt slowed the hell down a bit-- but just a bit. Like speeding on the freeway rather than gunning down the autobahn. By turns abrasive and musically complex, Struction will astound you and make you giggle in fear and generally make things more complicated for you than they are now. Sometimes this will be for the better; sometimes, however, their delicate balance of AAH! vs. hmm will just get thrown way out of whack and you will basically rue the day this whole thing came into your life.

Apart from being abrasive by traditional means (screeching! instruments playing with only tenuous attachments to any steady meter!), "Surgical Instrument" opens with opposing lyrics from different angles with simultaneous pummelment over the head with dissonance-- like having to read two different books at once while vicious attack dogs play guitars next to you, real loud. Not that abrasion is their only game: it is a lot of fun to watch the instruments hold together, and the melodies they interweave are surprisingly tangible. See also: "Scaffolding"-- a catchy little nonassuming riff opens the track, and suddenly chaos is centered around it. The closing moments almost bring to mind the lovable introspective noodling of Don Cab's American Don.

What is not Lightning Bolt about Struction are the vocals-- Meira Sonin and David Podrid actually, you know, sing, giving the dissonance a soul to build off of. Despite this, though, Struction is too inconsistent to enjoy thoroughly, and too exhausting to enjoy for any length of time, but while it lasts, it can be a heck of a scary fun party. Recommended to fans of incosistent exhausting scary fun parties!


quoth Noah Jackson.



-> 1/ Surgical Instrument
2/ Growth Incident
-> 3/ Scaffolding
4/ Untitled
5/ Hardcore Bar Mitzvah
6/ Dave's Other Crazy