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The Dead C, "Harsh 70's Reality"
This 1992 double LP has historically been regarded to be The Dead C's zenith, though contention for that particular honor has gotten quite a bit more crowded with some of their more recent efforts.  In any case, there are certainly a few excellent songs and flashes of outsider brilliance amidst all the stumbling, shambling chaos and gleefully deliberate self-sabotage.  The flaws are a large part of the charm though–lots of people write good songs, but no one else has maintained this degree of playful, yet unwavering insouciance for quite as long as this New Zealand trio has (nor would they presumably want to).  That inexplicable persistence is its own artistic triumph though and this album is the most towering monument to it.
In classic self-defeating Dead C fashion, Harsh 70's Reality opens with over 20 minutes of abstract guitar noise in "Driver UFO."  Not a firestorm of dynamic Sonic Youth-style squall, mind you; just a buzzing, sizzling, and roiling ocean of feedback punctuated with occasional stabs of clanging strums or a rare deliberately played note.  Gradually it gives way to some indifferently played one-finger Farfisa drones that seem to randomly stop at times, before giving way yet again to a non-crescendo of still more strangled feedback.  Admittedly, some of the guitar noises are sporadically very cool (especially when they sound like a large dying animal), but "Driver UFO" is most successful as both a provocation and a statement of intent: it filled the entire A side of the initial vinyl release, forcing hapless first-time listeners to listen to the entire interminable thing in doomed expectation that it would eventually cohere into something more, which it never does.
Of course, the genius of The Dead C lies in their ambiguity and unpredictability, as the line separating "brilliant rock deconstruction" and "improvised, tossed-off mess" is particularly blurry with them.  While a lot of their work is admittedly lo-fi, half-assed chaos, they do occasionally get things gloriously right.  The first hint that there might be something more to this album comes with the surprisingly propulsive second song "Sky," which is basically sludgy two-chord punk rock enhanced by moaning and squawking feedback and drumming that sounds like it is constantly on the verge of losing the beat or accidentally changing the time signature (which is presumably intentional, as Robbie Yeats has spent time in, uh, more traditionally competent bands like The Verlaines).  Also, the lyrics, when decipherable, are simultaneously cryptic, defiant, and vaguely menacing (at least from their tone).
"Sky" is followed by the epic "Love," which is one of the best Dead C songs ever and the primary reason why this album is worth owning.  It is built upon a lazily strummed, brooding, and murky two-chord progression, which would normally be quite a bit of structure for a Dead C song, but it is initially undercut by a noisy, wandering guitar solo, odd stops and starts, and unnervingly arbitrary snare hits.  After about three minutes, however, Michael Morley (I think) steps up to the mic and starts creepily repeating variations of the phrase "and you talk about the rules" with unexpected intensity.  From then on, "Love" is basically 9 minutes of slow-burning, ebbing-and-flowing bad-ass noise rock perfection, as either Morley or Bruce Russell unleashes a prolonged meandering guitar solo that resembles nothing less than a demon-possessed Neil Young on quaaludes...which is exactly the sort of amazing experience that I can only get from The Dead C.
The other major song on the album is the similarly lengthy closer "Hope," which is equal parts great and maddeningly exasperating.  Built upon just one insistently played dissonant chord, mumbled vocals, and an accompaniment of cool echoey guitar noises, it sounds like one of the best songs that Jandek never wrote...for a while, anyway.  Then around the halfway point, it explodes into an awkward crescendo and also sounds like it is suddenly being recorded live in a loud club, which is disorienting to say the least.  Then it ends, then comes back...without any crowd noise at all.  I think the crowd noise might actually be a tape, as it sounds just as loud as the music and it also seems like quite a lot of happy people chatting, which seems like a very implausible thing to be happening during an incredibly bleak song by an incredibly obscure band (at the time, anyway).
The rest of the album is the proverbial "mixed bag," as there is quite a bit of lo-fi, treble-heavy messiness strewn about.  I like the brief "Suffer Bomb Damage" a lot though, which combines a forlorn Farfisa non-melody with the jagged, murky scrape of a single insistently strummed chord.  The smoldering "Baseheart" is another strong moment, as feedback and gnarled guitar slashes buffet a sludgy bass throb and unexpectedly decipherable and consistent vocals.  The lesser songs are not exactly filler though, as they all nicely augment the mood of dark, anything-can-happen nihilism that pervades the album.
The version of Harsh 70's Reality that I have is the 1998 reissue, which omits two songs from the original LPs: "Shark" and "T. is Never Over I & II."  Both were restored, however, for Siltbreeze's "remastered" 2012 reissue (I cannot detect any improvement in the band's willfully messy sound, nor would I necessarily want it to be improved in the first place).  "T. is Never Over" is an fairly inessential bit of smoldering guitar wreckage that later turned up on the Vain, Erudite, and Stupid compilation.  "Shark" is quite a compellingly ridiculous piece though, combining sloppy guitar noodling with a pitch-shifted voice recording and spirited "polka beat" drumming that sounds perpetually on the verge of careening out of control (a recurring Dead C highlight, I suppose).
Notably, I have seen Harsh 70's Reality periodically hailed as both a masterpiece and one of the single best albums of the '90s, claims that seem absolutely insane if I base my judgment solely on the quality of the songs.  I suppose it is kind of a masterpiece in some less tangible sense, however, as it is an absolute monolith of sprawling, willful wrongness that practically dares people to try and like it.  Though that attitude certainly appeals to me, I suspect that folks who are less amused by brazen contrarianism than I am will find little to warm to here aside from the absolutely stellar "Love."  There are certainly more song-based, accessible Dead C albums out there to be enjoyed for those who want them, but this is the ideal destination for those looking for something a bit different: a prolonged wallow in the messy, smoldering ruins of rock music.
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