Look What
You Made Me Do
Self-Released
By Beverly Bryan
Can we interest you in a big dumb hot flat slab of undifferentiated, unreconstructed rock? The Pinx’s Look What You Made Me Do, perhaps? It appears to be an album constructed from the sweaty, cheesy end of '70s rock and the sweaty, cheesy end of '90s rock. Somehow, through the increasingly complicated calculus of musical cycles this local juggernaut comes out sounding fairly contemporary.
“Am I Your Lover” is a perfect example, and bit of a jam by the way. The music is Steely Dan seductive but the lyrics are Weezer insecure and confessional. Nice, if you can take it. Other songs seem to combine the likes of Smashing Pumpkins with, say, Black Sabbath. For the most part, however, it’s all such a gloriously primordial slurry of atavistic wankery that there is little point in trying to sort heads from tails. Especially when a few truly driving tracks like “Crypto” emerge from the ooze and evolve to the point of being almost memorable.
The way this power trio can employ their considerable technical proficiency in rock without any restraint or sign of reflection ultimately makes the album kind of endearing. Sure, they’ll slow it down for a song like “Change Me,” but that’s probably because they wore themselves out during the hasty full-bore of the first two tracks on the album, “The Desert” and “Impatience.” Look What You Made Me Do is essentially the musical equivalent of a first welding project in auto shop class, with awkward joints spilling bulbous protrusions of metal scar tissue everywhere — earnest, noble, hideous and perfectly serviceable. Take it home.
Comments