For Smell Stans the world over (yes, that includes yours truly), 2009 was shaping up to be a really shitty year for the Los Angeles-based club and its core bands. As suggested in the well-written profile of the DIY performance space by LA Weekly’s Jessica Hopper, No Age has so thoroughly become the poster boys of the vegan sweatbox-diguised-as-a-venue, that even the dudes in the band wonder if their fame is hurting the club. In addition, fair-weather fans of scuzzy-but-infectious noise-punk have seemed to migrate south to San Diego, where a bedroom wunderkind named Nathan Williams (he of Wavves, a solo-project already dubbed “2009’s No Age”) rules the roost. It seems as though fans of The Smell and its effects-pedal-toting stage dwellers needed a boost of confidence over the last couple of months.
Now’s a good enough time as any for Abe Vigoda, the band of migrants from Chino, to step out of the dugout. With the HP ink still fresh on year-end lists rhapsodizing the merits of Skeleton, their fairly impressive debut, the quartet come skateboarding into 2009 with a five-song EP– titled Reviver— that, despite its brevity, offer more even more left-turns than their LP.
After a concise period of outlying drone, “Don’t Lie” comes sprinting through the gate with a straightforward drum beat, a swarm of guitars, and a British accent as believable as their namesake’s role in Joe Versus the Volcano. Gone are the DNA strands of the frustratingly overused genre term “Tropical-Punk,” with its shuffling drumbeats and guitars that sound like steel drums. Whereas “Tropical-Punk” was music critic shorthand for “Vampire Weekend with Balls, ” the sounds explored on Reviver are more akin to noise-rock forebears My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus and Mary Chain. The EP is punctuated with so much headachey feedback, it could likely even force Kevin Shields and the Reid Brothers into the corners of their homes, covering their crotches and thinking about baseball and, worst-case scenario, a nude Margaret Thatcher.
Or Conversely, a Nude Abe Vigoda
The chorus of “Don’t Lie” and the whole of “House” has the breakneck pace, rhythmic heft, and melodic interplay of Bloc Party before Kele Okereke mastered the fine art of the shitty idea. On the flipside (if you have a record player, do yourself a favor and buy this on vinyl), “The Reaper” is the only track on the EP that bares resemblance to Skeleton, with its chiming riffs riding on the back of the now-departed trump card, drummer Reggie Guerrero. Providing the most notable diversion from the band’s previous sound is the one-two punch of “Endless Sleeper” and “Wild Heart.” The band takes a semi-faithful rendition of the latter, originally written by Stevie Nicks, and brazenly interrupts it with six-string electrics rendered gloriously cacophonous enough to draw snot from your nose–fading on a pretty blissed-out note. The former cut is more interlude, a feedback-laden, drone lullaby, with singers Michael Vidal and Juan Velazquez taking turns cooing lyrics such as, “Tear it up when you die,” playing up the emo-like disposition Vidal’s haircut implies.
It’s safe to say that Reviver takes the promise of Skeleton and capitalizes on it exponentially, making the boys in Abe Vigoda that much more worthy of the hype bestowed on them upon their crash into underground art-rock’s limelight last year. And if its fate lies in the humble obscurity of those who roam its backstage, The Smell is fucking doomed.
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