Marc Ribot is tough to put your finger on. He's a left-hander playing guitar right-handed who's turned his natural avant-garde tendencies into a prolific career as a collaborator; to say his music as a solo artist and bandleader is unpredictable is an understatement. He's done everything from straightforward rock to no wave to his own spin on Latin music in between outside gigs, where he's helped re-invent Tom Waits and worked with John Zorn, Elvis Costello, Alison Kraus, Foetus, Wilson Pickett, and Allen Ginsberg, among many others.
This latest album (roughly his 19th) finds him in a power trio setting with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith, with a sound somewhere between his freakiest no wave outbursts and his most direct rock output, with a bit more emphasis on the former. Ribot pokes a bit of fun at his own scattershot output on his website, specifying that Ceramic Dog is "not a project; a real band." There are traces of funk and ambient music running through the record, and it opens with the most sickly distorted and bastardized cover of the Doors' "Break on Through" imaginable-- the original's riff has been forcefully molded into a warped funk-punk groove.
It's all done with a certain rambunctious humor that makes it seem pretty natural that the noisescape of "Digital Handshake" could sit just two songs from "Todo el Mundo Es Kitsch", a song that lives up to its name with wry spoken vocals and a Latin lounge beat. While "Kitsch" is charming, though, "Handshake" spends five minutes noodling with harsh noise before finally going somewhere, too late to make a difference. Ribot has shown in the past that the line between pushing the envelope and outsmarting yourself can be ambiguous at best, and this track is an example of him crossing that line.
Ribot's past dips into Latin rock hybrids are traceable on certain songs, such as standout "For Malena", a song with a stripped-back cumbia feel that replaces the usual hand drums with simple clicking and keeps the rhythm reserved. The verses are separated by a cool horn arrangement that sounds vaguely Balkan, and the track come off as similar in tone and construction to some of his best work with Tom Waits. It's amazing the way the band just plows through anything he can cook up for it. "Malena" is immediately followed by the ripping Spanish-language dance track "Pinch", a punk disco number that leaves lots of room for a hellishly bent guitar solo.
I think the best term to describe the record as a whole is "schizophonic." Every time you think the band has settled on psychedelic disco or blistering avant-noise, they throw another curve at you. "When We Were Young and We Were Freaks" is a barely-there spoken word/ambient/noise piece that reminds me of something Lee Ranaldo might have done on his own in the mid-1990s-- it's compelling in its decrepitude and just about the polar opposite of "Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch". The risk of experimentation is failure, and there are parts of this album that just don't work-- see "Digital Handshake" and the listless free rock mess of the first half of "Midost". As much as its variety sometimes translates to inconsistency, though, Party Intellectuals is a generally interesting listen and could even work as a nice introduction to Ribot's work as a leader for the way it runs so much of his gamut.
