The catch-all "post-punk" is a term wielded like a sword when a scalpel is required. That's partly because post-punk carts around the mismatched baggage of history and revisionism. Take, for example, Life Processes by ¡Forward, Russia!; a curious mélange of studied dance-punk and flailing hardcore, Life strides a couple of well-trodden paths. Whereas FR's first record, 2006's Give Me a Wall, utilized Bloc Party's hi-hat-and-guitar anthems, the enigmatic Processes attempts to lose you in the stereo horizon, adding ham-fisted stabs of distortion pedals and synthesizer swaths. Like Mystery Jets, ¡Forward, Russia! seem fascinated by anxious rock that twists elaborate melodies around their vocalist's fey falsettos. Only where Mystery Jets singer Blaine Harrison wryly borrows from both Bowie and XTC, ¡Forward, Russia!'s Tom Woodhead plumbs a sort of emotional arrogance usually reserved for American hardcore, while evangelizing the artificially heightened emotions of Peter Gabriel.
Every part of Life Processes seems meticulously calculated with such antecedents in mind, laid out in every detail and implemented exactly to referential specification. "We Are Grey Matter", which transitions from the opener "Welcome to the Moment (The Rest of Your Life)", moves rotely up and down in volume and vocal intensity between verse and chorus, with Woodhead's dynamic shifts and shouts all seeming like inevitabilities.
Sometimes it works to their advantage. Single "Breaking Standing" could have been a Synchronicity-era hit, riding dub-like guitar pulses and sixteenth-note hi-hats and staying out of the trouble that excess distortion could bring them; it's just about the tidiest cut they've ever performed. But then "Gravity and Heat" follows and provides a fitting study in opposites: indulgent math-rock bouncing between taut power chords and a high-pitched guitar dissonance. Besides that Woodhead falsetto, it's really nothing you haven't heard before. It's the sort of self-centered angst that engages, and almost wins, a war of attrition on your sense of cultural regurgitation. But if you're careful, you can dodge the emotional bullets and get close enough to see that, behind the lines, they're only firing other peoples' guns.
Still, there are tangible progressions from Give Me a Wall to Life Processes. First, the group's maddening tendency to title its compositions chronologically by number (e.g., "Sixteen" is the sixteenth song the band wrote). While I'm sure the band thought it might be funny to make listeners struggle to discuss "Nine" (which is track 4 on Give Me a Wall) or "Seventeen" (track 6), they couldn't realistically carry on with the convention. But more than that, they seem keyed into a greater cause than that of faux politico in the dance club. with tracks like "Breaking Standing", ¡Forward, Russia! have gotten the hang of the fuzzy alchemy of composition.
