One of the few bands who can make inconsistency a virtue, Single Frame record albums that are comparable to an hour of free-form college radio, bouncing between jangly pop and electronic noise throughout their brief, hook-filled songs. After a re-released debut album (Wetheads Come Running) and a stopgap EP (Burn Radio Airtest), the band returns with an album that's no less schizophrenic but focuses on the darker, electronic elements of their mercurial sound. What they've managed to keep here is Wetheads' sense of discovery. Unfortunately, what they've left behind are the hooks that made Wetheads Come Running worth coming back to.
In addition to the abrupt shifts in style between tracks, Body/End/Basement retains both the distorted, damaged electronics and the brevity of their debut-- every track except closer "Make Yourself" is less than three minutes long, and there is a fair share of "skits" and incidental pieces between songs. After an instrumental opening suite, "I'll Lose Your Balance" expertly builds tension, dropping chaotic guitar lines and drum machine beats between otherwise calm verses of piano and low-key vocals, before ending in guitar-thrash catharsis.
The unexpected funk of "New Black Document" is a welcome surprise, and tracks like "Exact Copy of This in the Basement" push the dirty electro under the surface of Wetheads to the fore. "Exact Copy" may be Body's boldest and most ferocious track, and most indicative of the album as a whole-- more aggressive than Wetheads, but with fewer guitars and a paranoid atmosphere that runs throughout its stylistic tangents.
After listening to their remix-heavy Burn Radio Airtest EP, it should have been obvious that the band were more interested in lo-fi experimentation than crafting ADD indie pop. I'd have expected an album of tracks more like "Make Yourself", which adds electronic drone and found sound while keeping its pop structure. It can't be called a sophomore slump, as Body shows a lot of the promise that their debut did, but it's a promise that I'd thought they would have built on by now.
