Depending on whether you think of "punk rock" as a sonic descriptor or a philosophy, records like Predatory Headlights are either the least or most punk-rock move possible. Tenement first gained significant attention in late 2011, when "Stupid World" started circulating. It was the kind of pissy, mid-fi pop-punk ("I don't want to live in this stupid world/ I don't fit in in this stupid world") one would assume is constantly churned out during slap-happy hours in their native Appleton, Wis. and sleepy residential exurbs just like it across the United States. They're now singed to Don Giovanni, current home of esteemed, confrontational punk acts Screaming Females, Priests, and Downtown Boys, so Predatory Headlights is liable to be the first Tenement album heard on a bigger scale. But Amos Pitsch has decided to make things considerably more difficult for himself and potential new listeners by dropping a record containing 25 songs and nearly 80 minutes of music.
It's easy to appreciate the gumption of Tenement automatically putting themselves in a discussion with London Calling, Zen Arcade, and Titus Andronicus' upcoming The Most Lamentable Tragedy. But Predatory Headlights isn't designed as a narrative, and it's certainly not a case of a band looking to prove they can do anything. Rather, it's a document of a band who feel empowered by not having a reputation to uphold, where they can still figure out their identity or happily choose not to have one at all.
Predatory Headlights is bookended by the band doing what they're best at, with Pitsch penning compact, uptempo chorus-focused songs that aren't slick or cloying or beholden to formula enough to be true power pop. In particular, lead single "Dull Joy" toys with dissonant grunge arpeggios, disaffected British accents, and a jarring bridge of chipmunked T. Rex harmonies, bearing a pleasing resemblance to alt-rock jokers like Cracker. Even when "Near You" or "The Shriveled Finger" hearken back to their formative days, Pitsch's vocals have enough heft and grit to set them apart.
Whether they're veering towards beery alt-country, piano-pop that plays like Spoon with a punkish patina ("Curtains Closed"), or Thin Lizzy tribute ("Garden of Secrecy"), most of Predatory Headlights sees Tenement working on their stylistic breadth without overextending themselves. Like so many other revered Midwestern punks, Pitsch prefers an out-of-step, everyman persona. He's quite literally a man on the street a number of times here, "street" being a physical or conceptual space where one can be an observer or participant in human failings and communication breakdowns.
Yet it's hard to seem humble when you're putting out an 80-minute record. Even if Predatory Headlights is a double album offered out of generosity, its consistency works against it. Songs like "Harvest Time (Has Come)" and "Under the Storm Clouds" are no differently structured or longer than what came before them. But less than 20 minutes in, the band seems incapable of hitting a peak or reaching a low. As a result, finishing Predatory Headlights in one sitting starts to feel impossible, or at least ill-advised.
In that case, you'll appreciate how easily it can be broken down into four 20-minute sections of vinyl. The flabbiest pockets lie in the midsection: half of Side C is taken up by "A Frightening Place for Normal People", an instrumental whose point could be made in two seconds: "We listen to Duke Ellington." But it goes on for about 10 minutes, a jazz odyssey in both the literal and Spinal Tap sense of the term. It's the one thing on Predatory Highlights that has the feel of an aesthetic gauntlet, and I'd also guess it's the song that led Tenement to believe they really did need to make a double LP.
Predatory Headlights grows on you only after it starts to shrink. Ditch the material that appears most filler-y—Side C, the instrumental interludes, the inert piano floater "Ants & Flies"—and you've sheared off a half-hour. Or, you could consider it to be a "Tenement 2011-2015" boxed set of sorts. This much material could've been parceled out as two LPs and maybe another transitional EP, a fairly standard output for a rock band over a four-year time period. Either way, Predatory Headlights works as a semi-immersive experience—think of having access to a top-notch college radio station for a long commute or a well-stocked jukebox. In this case, Pitsch casts himself less as a frontman than a DJ or the guy with a roll of quarters—someone with great taste and a love for his source material, but uninterested in putting the focus on himself.
