Crack Cloud - 'Pain Olympics'

By Phillipe Roberts

Mind-bending polyrhythms. Crushing bass. Assertive vocals, yelping, howling, and roaring for attention above brutal noise. In the eternally escalating 2010s post-punk arms race, Crack Cloud “emerged” in 2017 to near-universal praise for both their total command of the genre’s instrumental tropes, and their uniquely gutting chronicles of escape from a host of addictions: drugs, possessiveness, and the parasitic fever dream of capitalism as a whole. So when, in the midst of a pandemic, their “debut” album was announced with the jaw-dropping title Pain Olympics, their fate as wretched rockers at the top of a brooding heap seemed an inevitability. I was excited. You were excited. We all braced for the onslaught.

What a sweet relief to be dead wrong. Rather than the pain-numbing exercise in frantic riffing that might have been suggested by the excellent singles that preceded the album, Pain Olympics instead finds Crack Cloud exposing its soft underbelly, reframing a call to arms as a declaration of rebirth. Throwing off the chains of expectations, the Vancouver collective runs absolutely wild, taking the Olympic theme quite literally as they deliver operatic anthems, juicy, synthesized funk, and devastating acoustic ballads on one of the year’s most vital records. Burn down your fears and fly into the post-truth future–Crack Cloud wait with open arms.

Nowhere is the gravity of their ambition felt more completely than on Pain Olympics’s opener, the dazzling “Post-Truth (Birth of a Nation)”. Hardly a minute into the song’s rumbling introduction–a blistering, tom-heavy charge into call-and-response screeches of guitar, held together by truly sinister sub-bass–the apocalyptic proceedings take a heavenly turn. Guitars fade into oblivion, replaced by an angelic chorus carrying a theremin-like melody reminiscent of a classic space opera score. When the dust settles after five delirious minutes of sonic experimentation that rattles through skronking horns, sampled laughter, and a smattering of industrial noise, it feels as if the curtain has been pulled back on an entire world, ripe for exploration.

Crack Cloud thrives in this nonlinear, open-world mixtape format. Across the album, similar textural trials leave the rhythmic obsessions of their previous works in the dust of time. Previously unthinkable flourishes like the robotic auto-tune crooning on “The Next Fix,” the dizzying mid-song drum solo on “Ouster Stew,” and the smeared guitar shoegazing of “Angel Dust (Eternal Peace),” coexist perfectly with urgent punk drive. Artful transitions between songs blur the lines of genre even further, softening up the mind for whatever curveball lies in wait. Where a lesser “band” might fizzle in attempting such a grandiose shift in tone, Crack Cloud uses their distinct advantage with a collective’s worth of ideas to harness, as well as their time-honed skill, to tame that sprawl with an exacting ear for melody and an eagerness to design a future unhinged from nostalgia.

This endeavor’s success is due in large part to frontman and drummer Zach Choy allowing a greater diversity of voices to take center stage on Pain Olympics. The aforementioned choruses in “Post-Truth” and “Angel Dust” are the most striking examples, but “The Next Fix” and “Favour Your Fortune” both reap benefits from the use of massed voices: the former finding healing in its soothing mantra-like coda, and the latter spiking tension with explosive rhymes that bounce and stretch within the stereo image, surrounding the listener like a ring of fire. When Choy does take control, he wields the mic with deadly conviction. Playing foil to the dingy strums of acoustic guitar on “Something’s Gotta Give,” his ragged inhalations and the way his voice just barely carries the tune of the song ensure that his anguished plea to “please be so kind” hits like a hammer. And in quintessential art-punk form on “Ouster Stew,” he sneers and barks with the best of them, sounding quite perfectly like the doomed, trenchcoat-wearing rebel leader that the song’s music video makes him out to be.

Do not mourn for the Crack Cloud of yesterday. Beneath all the brave, sweeping orchestrations (and sometimes above it, as in the blazing “Tunnel Vision”) they’re still the same triumphantly resilient punk powerhouse that they’ve always been. Through their commitment to unravel their own predispositions and gnaw constantly at the urge to remain landlocked in despair, they’ve vaulted past any notion of capitalist competition to become only more human, more empathetic, and more graceful than ever before. A humble document of the wisdom of collective resistance, Pain Olympics is an essential listen for weary souls eager to get back into the fight.

Bichkraft - Desire

By Phillipe Roberts

Long before “dystopia” lost its edge in a buzzword death spiral, Urkanian four-piece Bichkraft were conjuring up squalls of noise-forward post-punk that gleefully bit back at the rise of global authoritarianism. Their first three Wharf Cat releases culminated in last year’s liberating 800, which saw the band take a sonic leap towards a tighter, more refined sound. Back in the studio yet again, Bichkraft fashion a subversive new sound on “Desire,” a bombshell in their discography that downshifts on the nervous energy towards a swaggering dance rock track that takes a brutal government to task. 

PRE-ORDER - https://www.wharfcatrecords.com/store/bichkraft-desire PRE-ORDR ON APPLE MUSIC - ADD LINK PRE-ORDER BANDCAMP - ADDLINK About “Desire” Kiev, Ukraine’s Bichkraft is back with their first single in English, "Desire" b/w "Rod." Where Bichkraft's lauded 800 was comprised of sprawling collaborations with Sam York (Public Practice), Elizabeth Skadden (Finally Punk, WALL) and Carson Cox (Merchandise, Too Free), here we see Bichkraft streamlined to the duo formation of Jenia Bichowski and Dima Novichenko. These concise and hook-driven tracks do not shy away from addressing the chaos and uncertainty of living in Ukraine. A-side "Desire" is about a police raid in a bar where young men were forced into military service afterwards. You can hear the fatigue and disappointment in Jenia Bichowski’s voice as he sings, “Baby, baby it's true / There's no safe place for you.” The B-side “Rod” sees Bichowski taking his vocal delivery to new places over an endless stream of Novichenko’s concise and morphing riffs. These two songs hint at an exciting new direction for Bichkraft, and we can't wait to hear more. The 7" flexi-disc is a limited run of 200 and comes with artwork designed by the band and a download card. About Bichkraft Dima Novichenko and Jenia Bichowski formed Bichkraft in the winter of 2014. They were joined by bassist Serzh Kupriychuk and recorded the Mascot LP. Shortly after, Zenya Fenec joined to play live drum machines. This four-piece recorded the album Shadoof in their hometown of Kiev, Ukraine. While visiting New York they recorded tracks for their most recent album, 800. They followed up 800 with the release of the "Desire" single in August of 2019. Bichkraft have played with such groups as WALL, Merchandise, Sonic Death, Selbram, The Sediment Club, Bambara, Ian Svenonius and Lust for Youth.

Lounge-style keys and bouncing percussion cover for lyrics indicting the repressive Ukranian regime for raiding dance clubs to forcibly conscript young men into the military, a relatively common occurrence in Bichkraft’s native Kiev. Vocalist Jenia Bichowski’s anguished delivery of the haunting hook - “Baby, baby it's true / There's no safe place for you” - speaks to the depth of dread churning beneath the surface of their collective minds, poisoning romance with fear. Guitars gleam like knives in the background, shifting between angular melodicism and frayed noise as they stumble, seasick, over each other. With the track careening to a close, Bichowski sings “I’m just hanging on” in a stupor, wounded by the violence he’s seen and anticipating the violence that’s sure to come as men are ripped off the streets. As both reportage and rock n’ roll, “Desire” hits the mark, dead center.

You can pre-order a 7” of “Desire” over on Wharf Cat’s site here.

REVIEW: Dove Lady - F

Phillipe Roberts

Tossing out one last release only hours before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, Dove Lady slide into home plate with three records under their belts for 2017. For most acts, a breakneck pace like that would suggest a “golden year” burst of creativity, a flash-in-the-pan outlier. But with 20 EPs to go in their crusade to drop one for each letter of the alphabet, Dove Lady seem to be revving up, trying to take the rest of their marathon at full steam. Even if they maintain that three-a-year pace and drop any detours like last year’s numerical swerve One, the DC duo are looking at at least 6 more years of charging towards that finish line.

But the thrill of the band’s evolution, the thumping, oxygen-flooded heart of those heady ambitions, comes down to pure mystery: what kind of band will Dove Lady be at the end of all this? Song by song, Andrew Thawley and Jeremy Ray are engaged in a game of musical pointillism, brushing a few new dots onto a canvas that, as of EP F, we’re still seeing up close. Years from now, when we stand back at the close of EP Z, what sort of cohesive image will (or could) emerge from the expanding cacophony of genres spilling out of these two?

And yet, like all of their previous works thus far, F is an album obsessed with moments, cohesion be damned. Dove Lady sinks their teeth into melodies with a uniquely rabid dedication to impulsive leaps in songwriting logic. No idea is safe or sacred. No song too pretty or catchy to escape a little bit of mutilation. At its furthest extreme, this philosophy coughs up a real head-turner on “Education Soul Connection.” Chopped up, spidery funk-rock riffing rides down the scales into a blend of gooey, yearning psych-rock reminiscent of Unknown Mortal Orchestra, before growing a pair of legs and hoofing it off into oblivion with a passage that pairs a Cash-style western drum shuffle with an explosively jagged math-rock lead guitar line. By the time the dust settles in your ears, you’re halfway through noise anthem “Volleyball, Volleyball Star Captain,” shaking it to a sweaty, palm-muted riff and the titular chant for the cartoon superhero you never knew you needed.

For all the muscular shredding and complex time signature noodling to be had on F, the EP is not without its quieter, more meditative moments. Opener “You Are All My People” is their most convincing attempt at lo-fi ambience so far. Looped piano, field recordings, and scrapped, Gamelan-style guitars squash, bend, and reverse into an immersive digitized swamp, saturated with humid texture à la Deerhunter. And the back half of “Let It Shine,” where the band quickly trades in the more anthemic opening for a slinky doo-wop waltz, soothes even as it theorizes that “acceptance is a sore thing.”

But on that slippery final track, “Occupation,” Dove Lady gel into their finest moment, peppering spoken-word monologuing about the wave of nationalist fear-mongering spreading across the country over synth chops and a diseased-sounding, moaning chorus, mocking the new-wave schmaltz of U2’s “With Or Without You” with both a wry grin and a heavy heart. It’s pop gone awry for a country lost at sea. Dove Lady are leading us somewhere, the map held tightly to their chests. Breadcrumb by breadcrumb, dot by dot, they challenge us to enjoy the pit stops, to see one color at a time. And so far, it’s working.

REVIEW: Dove Lady - E

Phillipe Roberts

Pause any song on Dove Lady’s excellent new EP E, fast forward 30 seconds or so, and try to guess where you’ll end up. Press play and listen for the sound of your expectations shattering. Five releases into a 26-EP project, Dove Lady only seem further away from solidifying their sound, and even less inclined to drop an outline around the white-hot plasma of punk, noise, ambient, and prog fueling their remarkable chemistry.

Barring the closing noise improvisation of “Eye Against Eye,” each song on E is a breathless sprint across genres. Opener “DZ Theme” comes slithering in on a mournful reversed guitar loop, grows a skeleton to the tune of martial drum triplets, and promptly implodes into fuzz-fried punk ferocity. Dove Lady have the attention span of the “SCAN” function on your radio. Songs unfold like a series of brief, dramatic love affairs. They might swoon over delicate, folky falsetto at the beginning of “Slapback,” but they’ll leave you in the lurch if you catch feelings while they flirt with hip-hop breakbeats and a smooth, surf-inspired interlude, only to leave the scene with a titanic, crashing alt-rock outro.

Given how recklessly catchy they remain throughout, it’s hard not to get attached to any one of these sections. Each suggests a track that would be tremendous on its own; as far as I’m concerned, the spectral R&B groove on “Can’t Be Sad” could go on forever. However, the beauty of E is that it constantly works to subvert that false sense of security while keeping you thoroughly entertained. If you love the chase, open your heart and give it a spin.

REVIEW: B Boys - Dada

Laura Kerry

“What do punk and dada have in common?” sounds like the kind of joke a cultural studies professor would ask while spilling crumbs from a pungent cheese-covered cracker onto his tweed blazer. Or, as seems to be the case with the band B Boys, it’s a question that three dudes might ask themselves while smoking weed on a couch.

For their latest album, Dada, Brooklyn-based B Boys features a mock question-and-answer in the place of a traditional bio that shows Andrew Kerr, Brendon Avalos, and Britton Walker in top form, equal parts philosophical and silly. “That’s a lot deeper than you look,” their fictional interviewer observes, after they explain that their album is “equal parts collective unconscious and personal experience.”

Dada, too, is a lot deeper than it first appears. Throughout the album, straightforward rock instruments play stripped-down ‘60s and ‘70s–influenced punk in 13 simply constructed songs. Most of the tracks are taut and crisp, with repeated structures and fairly uncomplicated instrumental parts. Not always so simple, though, is the way that these different parts fit together. In songs such as the all-instrumental “Time,” the bass and guitar intersect and dance apart, creating off-kilter, energetic rhythms. The dynamics throughout Dada are the kind best described by action metaphors: sputtering, buzzing, jumping. Sometimes the result is spacious and slow, sometimes it’s dense and quick, but more often than not, it provokes a low-level underlying sense of anxiety.

That anxiety reflects in the vocal parts, too. Most of the time, the singer uses a monotone half-yell—signaling the nihilistic side of punk over the angry—but the lyrics convey a much more nuanced spread of emotions. Though the art movement for which they named their album emphasizes nonsense and lack of meaning, Dada often sounds much more existentialist. “Identity seen in a mirror / This body encases all my fear… / Misery, euphoria / Pressures compressing one’s character,” they sing in their opener with the significant name, “B Boys Anthem.” On the closer, they round out the philosophy with, “What a man can be he must be (Nothing else matters) / To scale his hierarchy of needs (Describing patterns).” Much of the album concerns itself with large human questions. What is selfhood? What does it mean to be human?

B Boys embrace nonsense, too, though. In “Fear It,” a song with an uptempo list of worries, they sing, “When I don't feel anything and my mind draws blank / I repeat (I repeat) / Not everything has to make sense.” Embracing meaninglessness is the antidote to the fear and anxiety that they describe so sharply and economically throughout their album. This is the same embracing of nonsense that happens at the end of their fake interview bio, when, in response to the question, “Do you have anything specific you’d like to express to get the fans going?” the bio says they get up and turn on a wall of fans.  

Clearly, “dada” is sometimes just a combination of meaningless syllables, and a no-frills punk album is just a vibrant mix of rock instruments and chanting vocals that’s good to shake your head to. Other times, though, it's also much more.