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The Dead C, "The Damned"
Both 2000's eponymous double album and 2001's New Electric Music have shown New Zealand's famed noise rockers moving (perhaps lurching) towards a more sparse, more seductive sound. Though any Dead C record will inevitably contain enough variety to postpone classification and prolong interest, the group's post-millenium output so far has predicted a steady increase in song quality, as well as more broad, stylistic refinement. The shoddily-produced, clattering heap of guitar, bass, and drum noise that was the signature sound of early Dead C has taken a thinner, more bottom-heavy, and more atmospheric form as of late, with concentration on complex textures and assemblage rather than riff torture.Starlight Furniture Co.
Surely none of this has been enough to alienate fans of the earlier, junkier, rockist style; the Dead C seems a band that consistently skirts expectation, only to receive little or no acknowledgement for their efforts. They've never quite escaped the stigma that reduces them to lo-fi, feedback-happy sludge rockers, and their fans strangely adore them for it. Do true appreciators of the Dead C occupy some hidden corner of the elitist camp, brandishing their treasure like some jagged crystal? I like to think so, though The Damned, like any new release by the band, has me confused. Half of the disc's six tracks are of the same ill-produced, tripping-over-itself, psych/noise thump that the C have mined for years. Elsewhere, songs like the aptly-named "Atmosphere," feature the group at their most hypnotic, riding waves of distortion, amp buzz, and shuddering guitar screech, patient in its development and highly effective. The louder, busier tracks do not work as well, often losing focus and drifting aimlessly, but on tracks like "The Provider," the band proves it can create thoroughly gripping, even unique music from the most derivative of forms. With each new release, the Dead C identity inches closer to what I've suspected they were all along, more of an institution than a unit bound by rules of time or progress. The group plays as if preaching, by compulsion. They may not be believed, but they will be heard. They may repeat and contradict, but the germ of what they are doing is always audible. Epic four-track noise jams to play on repeat: this is why I listen. 
