Let's just use Emperor X's metaphor: One time, Chad Matheny and some friends scrape together just enough junk-- rope, poles and tarp-- to make a man-sized kite, a pre-Wright Brothers low-tech flying device, and they strap themselves in and jump into the winds of a hurricane to catch a few seconds of gust outside Jacksonville, Florida. Just as the ad hoc construction of the wing didn't stop it from taking wind, the aesthetic of Emperor X's recording belies its craft. Homemade and sometimes grungily recorded, the latest record by Chad Matheny's one-man band delivers jitter-- and indie pop that practically gnaws its own arm with excitement.
Central Hug/Friendarmy/Fractal Dunes (a single album named as if it were a collection of EPs) has the same aesthetic as last year's Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform, but the pace is quicker. Matheny's urgent screams are like Travis Morrison's speak-sing, but while he tempers the album with typical indie ballads ("The Citizens of Wichita", "Ainseley"), it's frenzied anthems like "Edgeless" that sell this junkheap.
Matheny built the record from tinny beats and synths, guitar scraped like by nails as if against files, imagery both lucid and absurd, and bass and percussion that wander in so casually you could forget that he recorded and meticulously overdubbed the parts by himself. He tempers his inventiveness with willful crudeness-- as on the closing instrumental, where he changes the tempo by just knocking down the tape speed. And while there are as many beats as guitars-- "Sfearion" is enthusiastic indietronica, with whomping bass near the end-- the synths are as refreshingly rough as the rest of the music: The poppiest songs are fuzzed out and distorted, but still fit for dancing, or at least for hurtling yourself in place.
It's easy to act nonchalant about lo-fi, four-track wizardry, and in the post-Microphones, post-Postal Service world, we underrate the use of beats, new textures or inventive overdubs because we insist that originality won't make a record engaging. But Central Hug doesn't settle for sounding "original" or "clever": It nakedly gives a shit about itself, as Matheny assembles his album with tape and cheap wire, building it quickly before the hurricane passes and stretching it to the breaking point with the shout that's scrawled across the disc's face, "GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO..."
