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Roto, The Low Power Hour (Resin Records): One of the
most interesting times for music was back in the early '80s in
Southern California, when alienation and disconnectedness were more
common tropes than the notions of wild abandon and
immersion-in-the-moment favored by rock music until post-punk came
along with its wonderful and pretentious ideas about performance.
Listen to "Strip Club" by 100 Flowers, for example — when you
really engage with the song, the experience is so radically different
from that of pumping your fist to "Smoke on the Water" that the two
songs hardly seem to be from the same galaxy, though in the final
analysis they're both just rock songs. So it is with The Low Power
Hour, an album by a strange band consisting of a two guys named
David Arbury and Carlton Ingram and a permanently floating drummer.
(In the interest of disclosure: John Davis of Holiday Matinee, who
did publicity for my band's last album, plays drums on three tracks
here, and was probably the guy who got a copy of the record sent to
me for review.) These songs are recognizably indie rock songs —
post-Fugazi, post-Slint clean-guitar abstract-lyric meditations on
nothing identifiable — but they chase an elusive nexus between
involvement and the total lack thereof. One moment (the opening
"Trickster") they're so passionate that heat seems to rise from them,
and the next ("Glass") they're engaged in interesting but ultimately
bloodless exercises in melodic and linguistic phraseology. Like lots
of ambitious things, The Low Power Hour isn't without its
hey-ouch moments — on "Wrecking Ball," one of the two singers
mispronounces both "philanthropy" and "misanthropy," and regardless
of whether he's doing it to make the words fit into his rhythm or
because he doesn't know how to pronounce them, it's embarrassing to
hear. There's a number called "Stasis" that's just plain dreadful,
and one called "Time Trial" that isn't much better. But the album's
brighter spots are moments of profoundly realized discomfort,
marrying elegantly flowing rhythmic and melodic exercises to nervous
meditations on self and other, like the pained questions peppering
the softly terrifying "Pipeline": "Is this a friendship, or is it
just a matter of time?" and "Can you hear me when I tell you that I'm
talking to you?" I suspect that Roto will quickly shuffle off into
history, but they've got at least one great album somewhere in them.
The Low Power Hour isn't it, but a bracing step toward that
possibility. — John Darnielle
copyright (c) 2001 michael goldberg | design by elephantcloud
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