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Some
might call it strident and obnoxious-as-fuck
alternative rock,
while others might prefer to go with the ‘pure schlock’ tag.
And yet others might be more inclined to get their brand of
arty hook-less (though judging by their more recent work
occasionally hook-laden) quick and spastic, seizure-inducing
alterna-core, and to a degree understand the bizarre spur of the
moment energy that seems to drip from every one of their
songs.
Like is the case with every other good
band
on the planet, the result sometimes works and at others it
simply falls flat on its bony face. As for their
videos;
well they run the same luck. Some remind of Plimpton’s cartoon
shorts while others are merely
computer
generated lo-fi primitivism that time and time again succeeds in
an old school ColecoVision way. And yet others are simply any
day lower than low quality, zero-production-values films spliced
together apparently in random fashion. The approach somehow
works because The Mae Shi’s diverging
music
lends itself to it but in other occasions fails because some of
the videos have no merit whatsoever. But hell, this DVD
includes more than 30 videos, so why bother complaining?
Truth be told, the music, like most of the videos (especially
the first half), hint at a great artistic potential that either
the band is eluding or is about to bank on. The guitars
and structure arrangements often possess the sort of catchiness
that differentiates the music of the sheep from the music of the
idiot savant. I believe I may be right but The Mae Shi fall
under the second category and if you have any doubts let’s just
wait and see or simply go back to songs like “Terrorbird” and
“Jubilee” and tell me they do not contain memorable tonalities
and guitar patterns that could, for normalcy’s sake, form part
of a more standard rock ‘n’ roll album.
Lock the Skull, Load the Gun
also includes a documentary of the band on tour promoting their
album Terrorbird.
In the same vein of the band’s music, this film is mostly
comprised by short snippets of the band playing gigs from coast
to coast and in between cities documents a group of well-humored
friends talking shit, shrieking like kittens on boiling water,
disguised as toga party-goers, driving from city to city,
talking about farting, babbling in front of the camera without
having anything to say, driving some more, hanging at someone’s
kitchen, doing laundry, playing house parties, shrieking some
more like they are all getting anally donkey-banged, and then a
whole bunch of other people who have no business being included
in the video, like the chubby dude bouncing a basket ball
onstage, or like the pink-haired pimpled-face chick that likes
to talk shit but thinks she speaks like an intellectual. But
hey!, they are all part of the band’s inner circle, so why
shouldn’t they be included in the video?
In a nutshell, the documentary shows a bunch of friends on a
road trip; what happens in between is not as exciting as one
might anticipate a rock band’s tour to be, but the piece still
captures what it’s like to tirelessly hop from city to city, to
play for literally nobody, to crash on floors, to have shows
cancelled, and to experience life as a rock band without the
necessary funds to afford a shower a night. So much for the love
of music.
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