Review Summary: This banjo kills fascists.
Show Me The Body exist in something of their own musical bubble. Too violent to really be considered post punk, too warped and strange to be a hardcore band, and replacing the role of a lead guitar with a banjo, they've carved out their own niche as a boundary pushing, if not somewhat inconsistent, firebrand of New York's underground punk scene. There's a lot of noise rock and hip-hop in their sound too, drawing some inevitable comparisons to industrial hip-hop titans
Death Grips. Their back catalogue is not without flaws, but the band have always shown genuine promise;
Body War's expansive scope was undermined a little by a slight lack of tonal consistency and inability to maintain momentum for its full runtime, and
Corpus 1's impressive feature list, packing rising stars such as
Denzel Curry and
Princess Nokia, also felt a little long-winded to be considered the finished article.
Dog Whistle is different.
A record opening with a track like 'Camp Orchestra' is making a statement from the off. The invocation of Auschwitz's infamous 'Work will set you free' slogan sets the tone for an album unabashedly political and apologetically brutal. Between the eastern European aesthetics of the track's winding intro ostinato, and the meatheaded, bruising bass riff that replaces it beyond the two minute mark, the track is one of the most vital and punishing punk songs of the year. Julian Cashwan Pratt's banjo is more akin to a buzzsaw than an instrument usually associated with country and folk, and his vocals before the closing breakdown are raw in just the right way.
Whilst the album retains the dynamic variety of previous efforts, the heavier reliance on sludgier, more hardcore-tinged musical themes does the record a huge favour. The throbbing, brooding energy of the subsequent tracks, 'Not for Love' and 'Badge Grabber' lean away from the straightforward punk of the opener, utilising chunky synthesised beats in their respective verses, but maintain the aesthetics of punk and hardcore so as not to be too much of a tone shift. It's this ability to maintain tonal consistency and an aesthetic coherence that are perhaps this record's strongest suit; a masterclass in experimentation and variety within a tightly focused sonic blueprint. The use of a banjo across the record in the place of a guitar also produces some really interesting variances from a traditional punk sound, rather than just being a gimmicky USP. It's more jangly and rattly in tone than a guitar when soaked in distortion, and really contrasts well with Pratt's harsh shouted vocals, and the dense bass lines dotted across the track listing on songs like the opener and 'Drought'. The use of the banjo to produce ominously delicate clean lines like those on 'Arcanum' adds another weapon to Show Me The Body's unique sonic watermark, and makes for a musical palate that makes far more sense than it really should on paper.
The band's ability to maintain tension and deliver a strong payoff is also really quite impressive. 'Now I Know' and 'Drought' feel gargantuan when their intros kick into gear and up the ante, whilst the breakdown on 'Forks and Knives' is more
Code Orange than anything else. Similarly, 'Arcanum' bends the ideas of 'Camp Orchestra's opening passage into the spine of a song, creating an eerily fragile contrast to the industrial sludge of the bass on the track, maintaining tension to the very last. It goes without saying that the lyrical discussions of violence, degradation, fascism and police brutality are entirely consistent with this musical motif of tension and darkness found throughout the album. Sure, it's hardly an optimistic ditty to slap a beaming smile on your face, but the coherence of Show Me The Body's creative vision on
Dog Whistle is incredibly satisfying, if not very, very bleak.
Whilst there's a huge amount to praise here, there are some weaker moments. Whilst neither 'Madonna Rocket', nor 'USA Lullaby' are weak tracks outright, the mix feels a bit thin on the ground, the tension doesn't quite pay off in the same way as the rest of the record primes you to expect, and whilst they're arguably the catchiest moments on the album,
Dog Whistle's merit lies more in bleak murkiness than being a collection of earworms. The interlude tracks are also moments of inconsistency. 'Animal in a Dream's musings on structural violence, and the idea that "Every institution has a hand in the business of death and eclipse" is a concept rarely broached by any kind of band, punk or not, and is starkly poetic. But, without trying to sound
too pretentious, 'Die for the Earth to Live' lacks the same conceptual scale in its lyrics, and the payoff of the closing track means that the interruption to the album's flow created by the interlude feels a little less justified.
In reality, these criticisms are just nitpicks, but when the rest of the record is as strong it is, it's a shame that these slight imperfections persisted on what is such an otherwise consistent and potent collection of tracks. Show Me The Body cover so much ground here, with an overall vision so tight that it's hard to think of another 2019 album that packs so much of a punch, with such energy and so many fresh ideas.
What's startling about
Dog Whistle though, isn't the degree to which it surpasses the band's previous outings, or the way it near-seamlessly flows from track to track, but the way encapsulates perfectly the bleak, violent and unwelcoming age that we've found ourselves living in. Dark and uncompromising, it's the punk album that 2019 deserves, even if perhaps it's not the one we want to see ourselves reflected in.
