Review Summary: We are Modernists Deconstructionists YeAh yEAh yEaH YEAHHh
I want to learn to play an instrument now. I want to learn how to play the guitar, and I want to learn how to bang on the drums.
Let me introduce you to this band I feel are somewhat cool and somewhat worth going down in history. U.S. Maple, self-proclaimed deconstructionists of rock and roll. Dude, they strike gold on their fourth full-length
Acre Thrills. I feel an emotional subtlety pervading through the first half of the album.
~emotional subtlety is like more powerful than in-your-face chaotic explosive spasms~
What you hear on
Acre Thrills is not random. Watch U.S. Maple play live what they have documented in studio--from the spots where the drumstick lands on the snare and cymbal to the inflections of Alan Johnson's raspy voice. Al Johnson himself jotted down all these inflections on paper in cryptic symbols: blank circle filled in circle voice shifts into a "closed throat" rasp here.
Gotta love love love the rasp and the stutter. Lyrics are kind of a mess, only thing I remember there being every now and then is YeAh yEAh yEaH YEAHHh
~album tries so hard to sound weird and random, but like at the same time it sounds like like rock, mind-boggling~
More melodic than their previous albums. Cleaner, more suave, more elegant. Less chaotic. More precise, refined. Speaks to me easier.
--->not more accessible?!?! Th-this messss? --> Yes. ->No more explosive noise-rock spasms. No more distorted guitar. It's all clean free jazz.
~those guitars man they're doing something really spazzy occasionally they even pluck in a bizarre way "babe" so reminiscent of derek bailey~
D-d-D-discordant rhythms, twisted and tangled, cut-up, look at me I'm William S. look at me Burroughs I'm, Captain Beefheart, singin' melodies I love to re-hear, can't spot them the first time though
Guitars evoke the later avant-garde jams of Sun Ra . . . What is this "Ma, Digital" "Babe" "Rice Ain't Afraid of Nothing" I hear you're not improvised? What is this I am bewildered
~percussion is wild man doesn't follow any particular rhythm kind of slides along like a toddler's foolin' around, and guess what it's not unconsciously feigned it's just cut in half numerous times~
Long Hair in Three Stages had none of this...its Sonic Youthy screeches of distorted guitar sure alienated me, but never has U.S. Maple sounded so . . .
unique and yet so simultaneously
close to me as they have on
Acrerere Thrills (Can you dance to this? I guess you can have seizures to it, but really robotic precise seizures)
astronomically , inspirational notation, astronomically eargasmic, You're so tempting I want to compose you, "Obey Your Concert" your Slint-like spoken word is so d-dark. And is the intro of "Total Fruit Warning" a warm-up or is it part of the music I think it's part of the music because If you've ever seen them live . . .
~i repeat with conviction, it's not improvised. it's not improvised. their most melodic and focused work to date, and still i say it's not improvised~
Did a band really compose this? But it's so precise, like the work of one genius composer? AND IT'S ONLY THIRTY MINUTES LONG also what is going on here with this guitar it's diametrically different from that guitar
wonder if its mathematical or if its rolling drums its jazzzzzy guitars were structured to be mathematically illogical. . . itzzz all abstract and whatnot i feel the melodies are Speaking To Me in a freudian type of wayyaya
~smooth ballads like "chang you're attractive" would you ever call anything on
trout mask replica a ballad~
And songs "Open a Rose" and "Make Your Bedroom Great" have the only somewhat normal structures here: march their catchy drum patterns do. They lack that "emotional subtlety" but I'll be damned if I said I didn't enjoy them.
YeahHh. Centerpiece and climax "Troop and Trouble" sssswelling into percussion / perfection.
~clean guitars sprawling all over me, jazzy, refined and articulate, dunno what you're playing (sounding straightforward except for one little thing i can't pin down like
ege bamyasi) wash all over me~
Look here, it's a 21st century classic. You just haven't heard it yet.
