The Rebel – The Incredible Hulk LP / Mouth-Watering Claustrophobic Changes! LP (Junior Aspirin)
Jumping over a couple of proper LPs and an epic (and great) singles/unreleased/rare double LP finds Wallers suffering from some serious creative cabin fever in the latter half of the latter half of the past decade. It was during the former year that bins were just starting to fill with LPs sporting a particular design layout we now know as the calling card of Sacred Bones Records. One of these records bore the same moniker as the two that are now four miles away, sitting at the beginning of this review. Titled Northern Rocks Bear Weird Vegetable, I had no idea what it was. My ignorance would continue for a few months, no doubt fueled by a strong and continuing distaste for another Sacred Bones concern, Blank Dogs. I felt threatened and alienated by the hype surrounding Mike Sniper’s recycling of a form that thousands of talentless twerps spent the previous 10 to 15 years beating into sub-mediocrity. Am I proud that a handful of solitary, windows-up drives were consumed by long (overlapping) monologues of ripping dissection aimed at Blank Dogs? Am I proud that I treated Blank Dogs like a sort of seventh sign; the confirmation that we were then irreversibly fucked by a controlling era of creative bankruptcy? No, these tantrums of bitter overreaction represent misspent negativity against a guy who, if his MRR interview is any indication (showing my naive side here), seemed like a good guy, if not a candidate for a shoot-the-shit kind of friend if personal history had undergone a slight shift in reality/geography. Point being that despite some snark-rockets fired in the direction of both Sniper, Sacred Bones, and the ponytail that runs said label, I never employed my heightened (of the past two years) sense of self-reflection to obtusely applaud the ear and inspiration shown by deciding to release Northern Rocks Bear Weird Vegetable, a great record drowned out by the dismal shit-storm that was 2008/2009. So yeah, sorry about that.
Conversely, neither Mouth-watering Claustrophobic Changes! nor The Incredible Hulk hint at the genius Wallers is capable of. They sound exactly like the desire at their respective cores … a desire to fuck-off in the home studio. The self-deprecating liners, when they can be understood, tell of stupid amounts of time belaboring these insufferably long explorations into the very essence of filler. Amusing moments are sporadic, such as recording most of The Cure’s “A Forest” unadulterated until some forced skips and hand-powered backwards repeats as the five or six minute mark approaches. By and large, these two records put Wallers’ keyboard minimalism front and center, making them similar to many of the other 40 or so titles bearing The Rebel name. That last sentence was a guess. I’m too let down by Mouth-watering Claustrophobic Changes! and The Incredible Hulk, as Wallers knows and could do much better. One is definitely released in an edition of 500. As to which one that might be, well, that information is going to fall victim to my apathy of disappointment; blocking any further research or memory refreshment in favor of advancing onwards to something that might mandate a much more positive review. (http://www.junioraspirin.com)
(Andrew Earles)
