Pearls & Brass – 'The Indian Tower' (Drag City)
3/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Those of you lucky enough to be in attendance and sober enough to enjoy the rest of the line-up at Slint's recent one-off reformation for the All Tomorrow's Parties festival last year will have noticed a distinct heavy, often bluesy metal presence not overtly evident in the curators' own sound to be discovered amongst the plush pages of the line up booklet. The pioneers, the try-everything double bacon genius burgers of them, were the Melvins, and the trite pretenders the ludicrously adored Bad Wizard, who sound like Wizard, but bad. Their name is not an ironic reflection of this. As is so often the case, the middle-ground has been overlooked, and time since talking to attendees has been focused on discussion of the merit of the former and pomposity of the latter. Some details, amongst them some Pearls and some Brass, have been skimmed over.
Their debut, 'The Indian Tower', is a sturdy edifice erected somewhere between the residences of those two bands, the view from its peak also taking in Black Sabbath to its right and Yes to its left. It's technical as hell, which you can only assume is the reason Slint fell for them, and the reason it can at times be no real trial to undergo a similar process yourself. For this is metal where all the energy usually reserved for being angry has instead been channelled in to being that little bit heavier, not so much in the sludge of the sound, but in the quickly knitted flow of notes that sit a little uncomfortably alongside one another. Simply by never holding on one sound for more than half a second and placing notes that sound like they should not shake each other's hands they've made a particularly heavy record without the 'gain' control on any amplifier ever having to go notably far toward the right of the dial. But not only do they play these queer connections of tones incessantly fast, as if repeatedly bored of the sound of the current note, they then repeat them until anyone within earshot has heard them a sufficient amount of times to bracket what usually goes in a typical major or minor scale and instead relax in their most prickly of song craft. Then they move on to another riff along a similar theme, and another, until a customary three to five minutes of the jape has passed.
It's even pretty heavy when it's acoustic, when its purpose is to be pretty whilst being heavy. And it's down mainly to that pre-discussed trick of confusing the ears with slightly bending the rules of melody that the likes of the two respite moments here, the eerie Nick Drake fronting Boris twinkles of 'I Learn The Hard Way' and the closing, dusty allure of 'Away the Mirrors', retain their weightiness. In such rare moments of calm, it's nice to hear them altering the game from the single minded assault of the more essentially amplified sections. But the rock and the roll remain their strengths, and it is to them that they play.
They set an adequately representative scene from the off with 'The Tower' and its thick guitar thwacks underlying growls and 'aaahs' from all around. From there, apart from the two noted instances of comparative hippy niceness, variation only really comes in the speed of how this is done rather than what's actually being played. A simple discrepancy, but a difference nonetheless, and at times it's just enough to invigorate, especially when at its most blues influenced on a frenetic 'The Face of God' or 'Pray For Sound', which The White Stripes could cover if Meg could ever get her head around the drum part. They'd smack you for saying that to them, so if in their company, keep it to yourself, but nevertheless in the back of your head.
So what's your problem, buddy? Merely that it's only momentarily invigorating, that there are only a handful of select moments where upon repeated listens you can allow these colossal riffs to really grab you. It tries to maintain a grip with each note, but only a few will connect, and fewer leave a bruise. The rest drift by, leaving you sitting there thinking the whole endeavour is mighty impressive, but for the most part a little distant.
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