Review Summary: Clattery two man noise rock at its most primal.
Pink plays guitar and sings through a telephone mouthpiece. Brown plays drums like a beast. Put them together and you have
Pink and Brown, perhaps the most spastic costumed noise rock group this side of
Lightning Bolt. Pink (John Dwyer from
Coachwhips,
The Ohsees and
The Hospitals) and Brown (Jeff Rosenberg from The Jews and Lavender Diamond) are sometimes frenetic and chaotic, sometimes sludgy and catchy in their stylings, but never do they stray from their goal of being as nasty and abrasive as possible.
Shame Fantasy II compiles the group's entire catalogue of recorded material (in reverse chronological order) onto one 45-minute cd, which includes one full length (
Final Foods, a split with
Death Drug and five previously unreleased recordings. Just one of
Shame Fantasy II's 22 tracks makes it to the 3-minute mark and the majority of them are under the 2-minute mark. Newer tracks such as "Black Pearl" and "Sheriff Jessum" show a
Melt Banana-esque catchy side to the band and older tracks such as "The Tunnel" and "Enter Officer, Exit Wound" show brief moments of calm interspersed with sections of complete cacophony, but the formula for each track is essentially the same. Whether Pink and Brown are playing fast, technical pieces (such as "Union Bomb") akin to
The Locust or more catchy, groove-oriented tunes such as "Messy Bessy, Get Undressy" (a little more akin to Dwyer's own Coachwhips), the goal always seems to be to squeeze the most noise possible out of the band's instruments, all while having a huge amount of fun.
Though
Shame Fantasy II may not be as wacky as the recordings of contemporaries such as
Lightning Bolt, nor as cohesive, it nonetheless provides a powerful slab of noise rock at its most primal. The newest tracks seem to show the band at the top of their game and if anything,
Shame Fantasy II is an entirely enjoyable compilation from a strikingly consistent group who were far too short-lived.
Recommended Tracks
Sheriff Jessum
Enter Officer, Exit Wound
The Tunnel
