The Hospitals' sophomore album I've Visited the Island of Jocks and Jazz is their first for Load, following a self-titled 2003 debut on In the Red. Albeit brief, that label lineage might tell savvy listeners all they need to know about the Portland group's depraved roots-noise mayhem. You could also track down their recent 12" on the Yakisakana imprint on which they cover the Who, the Kinks, and Harry Pussy with equally fond but irreverent abuse. Put more plainly, the Hospitals bring the chaotic trash-rock of acts like the Country Teasers or Cheater Slicks to an inevitable-- if not exactly logical-- conclusion, creating a willfully primitive, atonal scree whose flash is that of a string of firecrackers: sharp, immediate, and short-lasting.
Since their debut, the Hospitals have grown from a two-piece to a three-piece, with dual guitarists Ned Meiners and Rob Enbom joining drummer/vocalist Adam Stonehouse. This expansion has, if anything, resulted in a further degeneration of the band's sound. Whereas many of the songs on the debut maintained, or at least alluded to, standard garage-punk structures, most tracks here are deconstructed, with heavily reverbed vocals and serrated chords flying haphazardly past in fiery chunks. Unlike obvious precursors like Harry Pussy or Sightings, however, the Hospitals appear to have little ambition to drive these raucous exercises anywhere beyond their initial skin-deep assaultive shock.
The guitars on tracks like "Olympic Ghost" and "She's Not There" feature some vicious Bad Moon Rising tones that'll carry innate appeal for a certain segment of the garage/noise audience, and others like "Moving/Shaking" or "Airplanes There" actually contain rudimentary melodic hooks. Across it all, Stonehouse strikes a curious presence, providing most tracks with surprisingly straightforward rhythms while submitting his tortured vocals and shiftless lyrical observations to an ocean of distorted effects. His work is at its most effective on the album's more experimental cuts like "Problems", which reaches depths of almost Jandek-like imprecision, or the aggressive dissonance of "Be", the only track here that surpasses the three-minute mark.
Elsewhere, however, the Hospitals seem stubbornly intent on blurring their abstractions into sheer crude apathy. "I Had a Crummy Shift" wastes its promising title on an aimless 30-second slur, while "Rich People" contains a pointless goof on the familiar ballpark "Go team go!" ascending riff. Thankfully, this is a group that values brevity, and the majority the album's several one-dimensional non-starters ("Art Project", "Bands", "Jocks and Jazz") won't cost you more than a minute or two. This is a small, welcome courtesy from a band who don't otherwise seem to take listener satisfaction into much account at all.
