These days, being described as a female-fronted garage-punk outfit from Brooklyn sets off alarms. It sounds all too familiar. The Vivian Girls have cornered that market for the present, so if I were working the grind for Golden Triangle I’d find another corner of the girl-group, reverb-heavy, underworld to mine. First I’d keep my Southern roots, as they are from Austin and Hotlanta respectively (and BKLYN is just a roost for now) and in league with the awesome Rob’s House. Secondly they tend to lean towards the more conceptual art of performance – from the looks of their photo album they get wickedly dolled-up in corpse paint and feathers, smashing into each other, falling drunkenly to the floor. I’m gearing up for the first time I get to see them live. Thirdly, they’ve got a dude or two thrown in the mix that allow songs like “Night Brigade” to erupt like Mark E. Smith perversely intruding on a Kleenex/Lilliput practice. Fourthly, while initial contact might keep them in line with the nostalgic echo and jangle of the V. Girls, Golden Triangle are much more abstract, preferring wooly hoots and chants over quiver-harmonies, or mud-caked fuzz-riffs to steely shimmer, and most noticeably purely improvisational fits of noise and chaos instead of two-minute verse-chorus-verse temperaments. They seem to self-destruct every chance they get. Still, when you first hear “Prizefighter,” you’re going to shake your head in a chuckle, is this the same band? Thankfully no, they are obviously doing more good drugs, have Oneida’s Kid Millions behind the controls, and are searching for an motley tribalism far removed from sweet emissions of C86. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve continued to be smitten with the V. Girls -- it’s just that Golden Triangle leave a lot for the imagination to chew on.
No comments:
Post a Comment