STILL SINGLE

A space for thoughts on music and culture, as written by Doug Mosurock and a select handful of individuals. This is intended as a supplement to our regular feature Still Single, published on Dusted Magazine. Updates will run here more frequently, and may feature writing on music not covered in the column. Compact discs are still not accepted for review -- we have more than enough vinyl and the occasional cassette to worry about. Our Twitter feed keeps you apprised of reviews as they're published. It's kept locked and private, because with a name like @stillsingle, everyone thinks it's a dating site. Approvals happen whenever they happen.

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June 27, 2012

Final Club – Blank Entertainment LP (Adagio830)

RECOMMENDED

“Everything has been done” has been done. The hard kernel at the center of punk ideology has been mimicked ad infinitum itself, but it is easy to discern those using it as affectation, and those really feeling its effect. Above any redundancy of love, mimeographed joy or remembrance at odds with the day it is this – the nihilistic constraints that exist when you are just four guys toting guitar, drums, bass and vox – that Final Club are waxing passionate about. Like molasses, writhing tunefulness folds over this record’s austere packaging and signifiers, encasing a quality that sneaks in with a grade A “banger” or whatever in “Tragic World”. But more than this song running laps around your average flappy garage disavowal is that it’s a gatekeeper, ushering in the masses with an innocuous party invite. Are you listening? This is meant only for you. “Buy Into It” pulls in lyrically before turning its lilting nostalgia into a portable welt distributor that services the rest of the album; making turns and drawing corners at odd, exciting moments. Alternate universes are revealed in slight, then SIKE! A tangible chorus. Hair-raising, but tangible. Bite-size psychedelic asides begot catchy pop, and vice-versa. The methods all seem so coherent but they swell; see “Wizard Wells”, the return to zero song – the song that makes you want to listen to the whole album again at once. And a note on the guitar: Holy shit. Diverse and demanding of your attention: think Polvo. Also demanding are the lyrics. They poke out with bleak awareness, yet this all ends without infecting emptiness. For the dose was a placebo, all you felt was real; this is no empty gesture. Now we all know one can be too smart for their own good. Intelligence can compromise integrity, especially as one gets older and it becomes laced with anxiety. If this record has propriety on any finitude, it’s in its specificity. Captured on Blank Entertainment is the result of precise amounts of self-awareness, musical ability and youthful energy; all operating on the exact frequencies needed for it to happen. (http://www.adagio830.de)
(Elizabeth Murphy)

10 months ago • 0 notes