Eat Skull Get To "Clowning on Bitches"

I said no more SXSW posts, and I was serious, but Eat Skull was something, someone, some beings, that I completely ignored in my dispatches. Can’t figure out exactly why? It’s exactly two weeks to the day that I first saw them and the blaring, big bopper, organ irk of “Fucking Daddy,” or “Empty Eye Socket” (those titles are totally made-up btw) and is still eating at my inner skull. Like echoes I can’t pry from my head. If I could phonetically write it here I would. It’s still there. It’s still there. Hopefully this (precise moment in time) will be the first thing I’ll hear when the Siltbreeze LP hits my doorstep.

I did snag a copy of the Dead Families 7” on Skulltones (sold out before sold?) for stashing their gear and selling their ware, plus bible joint skills previously unknown – an artifact that encapsulates the Eat Skull experience – that four completely gentile and normal folk could come off as the anti-thesis of Psychedelic Horseshit but play right down the same vein. Every note could very well be the last. Rob (keyboards, guitar, vocals, man of life-affirming facial expressions) is animated to the point of being a cartoon -- a cartoon I would watch infinitely were reality a farce. Those organ blurts are melodic as fuck, but a surely a shield, a force field against the melodies warped in his perimeter. Mr. Lax called it something “the world’s not exactly ready for” (not his exact words) and members from the kid’s table quoted it’s the best record of the year – after of course, Rip it Off – but I’ve yet to hear this revolutionary document from the “clowning on bitches” genre (still preferring “shitpop” over all). So we’ll stick to the 3 songs I gots so far.

He’s preferring shitgaze, the other “clowning on bitches” (a family tree, pure evaluation forthcoming), I love shitpop. Eat Skull lump right in (more on lumping soon, promise) with the aesthetic, the fury. A-Side’ s always Haley’s “Rock N’ Round the Clokkk” – B-side’s the disfigured, gasping, reflection. Ladies and Gentlemen the constitution is to simultaneously be in on the “joke” and constructively in on the “conversation.” The lines def blur as Dadaistic barbs face battle vs. informed, progressive theories. Though from Portland, Eat Skull embody the 3 AM Columbus lifestyle, something I’ve fought hard to get out of, but am infinitely dragged into until the day I die. Mike Rep enjoyed it all “again and again.”

Back to the title track….and that brick wall Rob lays down, laying down on the keys, a kind of lovable limp death knell, punctuated with sugar spastic rock lines. I’m hearing the 50’s and 60’s, big room sonics -- when I certainly shouldn’t be allowed. Still he’s pushing back against the rest, the blurting bass line eventually crystallizes off something Sumner might trudge with through New Order, the breakdown and deconstruction might win out, but the balance of pleasure and catharsis is measurable. How’s that for gaze? My imagination runs wild like a pack of street runaways on rainy Portland streets. It’s gory and grotesque, completely charming at the same time, a beaming band of freewill. You’re in the family (as if I have permission). That album has a fuckton to live up too (the myspace link has some clues already).