Review Summary: I want something I've never seen, I want a new bad thing
If you are one of those who think that ‘sloppy’, ‘messy’, and ‘chaotic’ are definitely not pejoratives when it comes to music, then the
New Bad Things might be a new good thing to you. Society, their second full-length album, is a hotchpotch of indie rock tracks that sound like they are falling apart while being played, with off-key guitars strumming to accompany lead singer Matthew Hein’s mumbling melodies over lazy backing vocals that are deliberately false and occasionally seem to go stubbornly against the songs’ rhythm. And all this happens in the best way possible. True, at times Society explores the boundaries of the bearable for regular listeners, but if you can come to listen through the sunken, almost gurgling sound of the production of most of the tracks, you will be greeted by original songwriting, an album that radiates the fun the musicians must have had while recording it, and melodies that Option’s David Shirley rightly called “Beatle-worthy”.
New Bad Things were a Portland, Oregon based lo-fi indie rock band, active in the 90s and of inspiration to indie / lo-fi acts like
The Delgados and
Japanther. Originally the group formed as an one-off opening gig for Sebadoh, but in retrospect this turned out to be the beginning of a career that would comprise four albums over the course of about seven years. Society is the second full-length record, self-produced by the band and originally released by Lissy’s records in the UK. I was surprised that Sputnik does not already feature a review of this interesting album, that despite its obscurity has left its mark on other, slightly less obscure indie and lo-fi bands.
I discovered the band through Japanther’s cover of their song "The Dirge", which is Society’s last track, a song that ironically epitomizes simping with its repetitive ending in which the entire band wails the tragic words, over and over: “I love you, no matter where you spend the night. You can always come back to me because I am nothing, and you are everything.” Ouch. Giving the entire album a listen, I got hooked by the originality and extreme lo-fi quality of the different tracks, and I have been playing it now and again over the years. I think it deserves a chance to tread forwards from the clouds of obscurity in which it is still wreathed now.
Society is a very dynamic album, in which melodies and song sections tumble over one another, while, strangely, the songs never seem to lose their integrity. The title track opens with lazily strummed guitar chords, during which Matthew Hein gives us a taste of how cacophonous this album will get by whispering falsely over the doodling guitars, after which, a minute or so in the song, the drums start playing and an upbeat chorus kicks in. “Disappointed people are disappointing you, wanted something different, wanted something new.” sings Hein, after which, halfway into the song, it all caves in again. The song slows down, only to prepare a lively return to the chorus, which only by being slightly less off-key than the verse suddenly sounds fresh and appealing. The songs closes on another faster paced section, where Hein’s extremely catchy repetitive vocal partition is spiced up by back-up singer Christine Denk’s loud and proud disharmonious arpeggio's. This dynamism is present in many of the other songs, with the beautiful fifth track “Tickets” for example, switching half-way from a steady indie rock track to a swaying lo-fi waltz.
This album's unique beauty comes from the songs' ability to soar over the crappy production and background noise. I mean, they are really, really good. The band might have even been characterized as touching at times if irony had not pervaded all they did (such as on "Tickets"). Their songs are still catchy in a
Velvet Underground’s Loaded kind of way. Some of the songs, like "Fiberglass," seem to pay dubious homage to the sounds of the 1960s and might have easily fit on the White Album, had the Beatles been recording it in a dank basement while on acid. Other melodies are clearly influenced by simply being in Oregon in the nineties. The instrumental song “Crabby” is driven by a
Lync-like deliciously juicy bass line that seems to be crawling all over the fret board. The influence of nineties indie music stretches further: “Our Modern King” could well have been written by
Pavement - although it even beats Pavement in its disregard of recording conventions by a long shot. The beautiful, but slightly chaotically recorded vocals of “FMNL” are woven together to form an intimate melody reminiscent of
Eric's Trip’s demo’s. For all of these tracks, it seems to be the case that these melodies shine even more because they have to resist sinking away into the puddle of the instrumentation, and even though they are never delivered without a false note, bands like
Heffner and
Tullycraft have recognized the potential of these beautifully crafted melodies in their New Bad Things covers.
“The Dirge”, album's final track, will continue to be the most important reason for me to return to this record. Listening to it, I feel like I am lying down on a low couch in the band rehearsal room of the band listening to them play while they are smoking blunts, having a hard time not to chuckle over their own lyrics. The songs first addresses sex boredom ('When I was sixteen, all that I wanted was pretty and clean / now I know what it is like to have sex, I want to see something that I’ve never seen’), a theme that is soon inverted to address desperation of longing and self-defeatism that accompany love in the world of New Bad Things. 'I love you, no matter where you spend the night / You can always come back to me because I am nothing, and you are everything.' The bass line plays around, bringing some funk to these utterly tragic lyrics, while the band keeps repeating the last words, ever more falsely, until we finally hear the band collapse in laughter as the song fades out.
If even bands like Pavement are too pretty and clean for you, the New Bad Things might offer you something you've not yet seen.
