It's hard to overstate the similarities between Chicago duo My Gold Mask and early Yeah Yeah Yeahs. MGM's Jack Armondo's nylon-stringed electric guitar has the same prickly yet supple tone, and his streamlined riffs leave behind the same glittery trails. The guitar stabs on "Fingerprints" are so Nick Zinnerishly juiced-up they actually splash. And while Gretta Rochelle may "hear a thousand voices/ Possessing me," we can usually make out only one of them. Like Karen O, she runs on a rheostat, transitioning smoothly between low-wattage sultriness and a floodlit blare. At one point, she even breaks out the clock onomatopoeia from "Tick".
On the other hand, this is an entirely different kind of band. While YYYs seem intent on carrying similar influences into the future, MGM are self-aware, crafting a period homage that avoids sounding dated thanks to the band's raw primordial stomp. (Gretta Rochelle is the drummer and singer, and handles both tasks with a lot of physicality.) They seem to long for a regional heyday: There is something very "Chicago" about their 90s-rock nostalgia. Like Sybris, they salute an era when the Windy City was home to one of the world's biggest, most ambitious alt-rock bands, the Smashing Pumpkins, and they strive, in a pared-down and punked-up way, to recapture that spirit of high-stakes drama.
The limply retro Blondie sing-speak Rochelle deployed on "Bitches", My Gold Mask's minor (and rather silly) 2009 hit, reappears for portions of "All Up in the Air", but the new music is much better-- generous with epic breakdowns, mini guitar symphonies, massive drum and cymbal crashes, and lusty choruses. It's referential without feeling canned; a rambunctious DIY energy mortars together the big moments. "Violet Eyes" is clearly their killer track, with one of those forehead-smackingly simple arrangements that can be so effective when delivered with enough energy: It's mainly a lean sequence of riffs, fizzy syncopated woodblocks, and an instantly memorable vocal melody. "I like shooting arrows in the dark/ I like driving nails into your heart!" Rochelle sings with bratty sweetness, the lines whizzing up and bursting like fireworks on their end words.
But to say My Gold Mask are explosive is a compliment with a built-in criticism: They hit hard and fizzle quickly. Nothing else here has the impact of "Violet Eyes". "All Up in the Air" changes the tone, with off-kilter guitar sharking through all kinds of cool parts-- perhaps too many. The song gets lost in the signifiers. They shift again on "Fingerprints"-- it's a bit like the xx playing a medley of riffs from Metallica's Black Album-- to similarly blurry effect. By the reheated "Circle Mass", they seem to be out of ideas. Still, the bottled lightning of "Violet Eyes" makes My Gold Mask a band to watch-- if they begin to achieve that kind of unbridled immediacy more consistently, they'll be a powerhouse.
