Review Summary: New York based Progressive duo utilize loads of instruments, samples and overdubs to create lengthy, multi-genre debut.
After an afternoon of listening to mostly Owen and Minor Threat and after watching The Wizard, a 1989 kids movie about videogames starring Jenny Lewis, for the first time, I’m not sure I’m quite ready for Rocket Surgery. There isn’t anything intimidating about Owen, nothing too complex about Minor Threat, and The Wizard is far from a ‘dark’ movie, Rocket Surgery, on the other hand, is all of these things. Just the length of their debut album, nearly 80 minutes divided into 20+ songs and two ‘sides’, is enough to drive a man away, in search of something simpler, easier to digest. Lyrics and music alike feel overwhelmingly apocalyptic; the only audible words on 4th track,
Trainwreck , are
“the taste of flesh/so much better than the rest” , and these are sang seconds before the song turned into a terrifying mess, thick with synthesizer chords and damaged vocals. It isn’t a bad mess though, far from it in fact. Just not the kind of mess you want to be listening to home alone in the dark.
Rocket Surgery’s status as a duo is misleading. Their self-titled debut is stacked high with overdubs and samples; if I didn’t know better, I’d venture to guess that there were five or six members, at least. Rocket Surgery multi-instrumentalist Joel Kennedy switches tools frequently, usually playing either heavily distorted guitar or dark keyboards. Throughout Rocket Surgery’s constant changes in both genre and lead instrument, about the only thing that stays constant in drummer Mark Ludas’ playing, inventive at times, and heavily reliant on the ride cymbal. Nothing seems to faze Ludas, he’s on top of things during the Circus-Prog of
International Anthem and all throughout the multi-sectional, almost entirely instrumental, epic
Time (which, at 14 minutes, has no competition for the album’s longest track), as well the more conventional moments
Rocket Surgery offers.
Hardly anything about Rocket Surgery is even close to as reliable as Ludas is. Tracks are often completely different from the songs that precede them, and, in many instances, go through numerous changes from start to finish, ending far differently from the way they began. Only one other constant remains: whether a song is 2-3 minutes (like most) or 10+ (like one), nothing is really entirely conventional. The music on
Driving No Car is the album’s simplest—it’s a riff driven, guitar heavy tune, almost reminiscent of fellow guitar/drum duo The White Stripes—but the vocals, affected and strange, sound like nothing that would ever come out of Jack White’s mouth. Driving No Car begins the album’s second half, followed by as a string of guitar driven songs. Guitar based, as evidenced with
See You in the Past (a lengthy, partially a cappella tune that recalls Ok Computer-era Radiohead) does not necessarily mean a lack of progressiveness, however.
Overall,
Rocket Surgery is a tough listen, if only for its length. It’s consistently varied, progressive and, at times, quite great. And, despite its constant variation,
Rocket Surgery is unified by lyrical concepts (many lyrics revolve around time and an ended relationship) and singer Joel Kennedy’s distinctive voice. Maybe if the album was a bit more concise, I could find myself getting into it a little more but, as it stands now,
Rocket Surgery is a good album, if you can make it all the way through.
-Dan
