Review Summary: This band defies comparisons, so why do it?
Highly experimental and often unsettling, “Instant Everything, Constant Nothing” by Atlanta band Untied States is a record that defies categorization. Like the country that the name of the band is loosely based on, this effort is best described as a melting pot of styles, genres, and approaches.
Listing these for the purpose of filling space within the context of a record review would be pointless and unfair to the artist and the listener. Suffice to say that Untied States are first and foremost music fans that are into everything but are hell bent on blazing their own trail.
The record is tuneful, aggressive, dissonant, playful and scary. More often than not, it’s all these things at the same time. Many of the selections I’d describe as the sound of things falling apart, but that’s not to suggest that it’s improvisation. Every passage, twist and turn that these songs take the listener through is obviously carefully choreographed and planned out.
The trade off is that’s there’s nothing here that you are going to be humming to yourself while you’re say, mowing the lawn or working at your job. In exchange though, you get a record that demands your attention and challenges you at every juncture.
Only after you familiarize yourself with the blatantly rocky terrain enclosed within do you uncover snippets of riffs and hooks. Even more surprising is how plentiful and original they actually are. Like a scavenger hunt, the rewards are carefully hidden and meticulously positioned for your discovery.
If I were to be hard pressed to cite a negative here, it would be that some of the effects and treatments used sometimes drift towards an industrial kind of feel. While there’s nothing specifically wrong with that, I would humbly submit to the band that they don’t need them. There’s enough alchemy going on here within the instrumental interplay and the shifting time signatures to forego things like vocals intentionally drenched with static or the sound of rods and pistons churning in the background.
All things considered that’s only a minor quibble, as there’s more than enough spark enclosed within these grooves to generate plenty of exciting synapse within your brainwaves. One other review I read refers to this record as a roller coaster ride. The only thing I’d add to that is that there are no seatbelts.
