One of the inevitabilities of putting together best-of year-end listsis that there’s always one or two albums that don’t make it on theresimply because it didn’t surface until it was too late. Volcano!, ayoung band from Chicago, make music akin to a nervous fit of rage andare a perfect example of such an unfortunate circumstance.Leaf
Beautiful Seizure, the trio’s debut for the decidedly non-rock Leaf label is a welcome breath of fresh air and a wonderful surprise forthose who thought 2005 was solely dominated by new weird America andcoke snorting hipsters from Brooklyn. Time-bomb ticks and nervousvocals over livewire guitar playing push for room with startlinglybeautiful passages of atmospheric ambience and quiet folk. The resultis a disarmingly genuine and honest record.
Album standout “Fire Fire”begins with contemplative guitar chords and the free jazz inspireddrumming of Sam Scranton. Guitarist/vocalist Aaron With, who bears morethan a passing resemblance to Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, allows his voiceto quaver and shake, slowly building along with the rest of the band.Elsewhere, the band delves into long passages of seemingly randomsamples, which serves to add to the sound of the album as a whole, suchas on “$40,000 Plus Interest.” It would be easily to classify Volcano!as simply post-rock, and while they do share many common traits withthe genre, there is a streak of restlessness that prevents that tagfrom sticking. Like the best rock music, Volcano! take from a varietyof sources–the ambitious scope of post-rock, the anthemic thrust ofOK Computer-era Radiohead, and the flailing desperation ofpost-hardcore, to come up with something startlingly original yetinstantly familiar. “Red and White Bells” is perhaps the bestarticulation of what I’m talking about. At nearly nine and a halfminutes, the song see’s the band veer from all possible styles and is aperfect encapsulation of their varying tendencies.
What makes BeautifulSeizure so enjoyable and good is the confidence with which Volcano!attack their material. Few bands sound this confident first time out,and an album like this only makes me more excited to hear what the bandwill churn out next.
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