Never mind the 21st century's answer to the Tarkus on the front cover-- Receivers is Parts & Labor's most ambitious record, for sure, but they haven't gone off the deep end or made irreparable changes to their distinctive sound. They're still stubbornly reconstructing punk anthems from the same raw parts-- Dan Friel's wheezing, bagpipe-reminding keyboards chiefly among them-- but building something bigger, from stronger foundations. They aim for tension and nuance where they'd previously shouted and bludgeoned (not that anyone minded the bludgeoning, of course) and their tables of broken toys sound like tidal waves of melody and sound.
Of course, another essential part of their sound was the machine-man pummeling of drummer Christopher R. Weingarten, who has since left the band. Rather than fill his spot with more brute force, Joe Wong takes a relatively less-is-more approach, and Sarah Lipstate joins them on guitar with often clean, spacious playing that makes an auspicious contribution to these nine songs. "Satellites" is driven by a bright recurring mechanical tone, the rhythm of a one-chord guitar strum, and a voice that doesn't bellow or bark, but actually sings. The familiar 8-bit buzz of the keyboards bring in a counter-melody, the harmonies kick in and reach for the highest registers. If it isn't clear how "big" the band are going, all of it falls together for the second verse-- especially when the song builds to a towering unstable coda and finally evaporates into a minute of placid, layered static.
"Nowheres Nigh" is just as strikingly clean and ambitious, with a similar reach in vocals-- to be frank, neither of these guys are understudies for the Three Tenors, but BJ Warshaw confidently sells his vocals here and there's more than enough texture in these songs to comb over the thin parts. "Mount Misery" finds a way better vehicle for Dan Friel's croon, borrowing some more evocative theremin-aping electronics from his recent (and excellent) solo record as well as a damn-near folky guitar pluck from Lipstate, all over a half-time skipping rhythm. It's a big change for the band, but it works just as well as its busted-robot hardcore did on their previous two albums. Parts follow it up with their best curveball-- the slow simmer of "The Ceasing Now", replete with mechanical handclaps-- and save their boldest new material for the album's final three tracks.
It's not just more harmonies or more fun noises that they've piled on: Nothing on previous records compares to the wheeze and full-band crash on the chorus of "Wedding in a Wasteland" or the grinding, clattering crescendo of "Prefix Free"-- not to mention the fake-out that stretches the tension rather than merely exploding. They've tried all these things before to some degree, but just not in songs as layered, dynamic, or delivered with such a steady hand. It's hard to predict where they'll go from here when Receivers sounds as if they've stretched their favorite sonic ideas to the very brink of saturation-- but no one could have guessed they'd take them quite this far.
