I was surprised as hell when I read that existential crises were back in vogue. I mean, you give a fancy overseas war with high production values to a country of TV-addled youth whose social outreach extends to the local pharmacy waiting line, and what do they do? They don't even wait for their nation to be occupied by a warring fascist state before chronicling their tribulations with emotional isolation in a post-millennial millennia. And here I was thinking retro was the new retro! Well, as an established music critic, I was obligated to prove that I had my finger on the national pulse. After countless conference calls, it was decided that I should employ Pitchfork's patented 'Literary Introspection through Comedic MeansTM' and proffer a surgically sliced portion of my psyche to the readers for analysis; the way Dostoevsky, "Weird" Al, and Brent DiCrescenzo used to kick it.
After authoring an admittedly incoherent expose on my grappling with sexuality in a "Lester Bangs world," Editor Ryan courteously emailed me with some well chosen words of advice:
So how was I to convincingly marry the time-honored and humorless topic of philosophy to a webzine: the ultimate manifestation of ultra-modern technological excess? With a joke!
Congratulations, you have just taken part in the world's first documented 'interactive litmus test by means of musical criticism.' Judge yourself accordingly. If the pointlessness of that premise aggravated the shit out of you, you may be ready to listen to Pretty Girls Make Graves. If it was the pretentious upper-crust literati ambience that hung on every word like that layer of filth you just can't wash off, I advise you to go out and pick up the band's Lookout! Records debut, Good Health, before your roommates finish funneling last night's meal of crumbled snack crackers into your gas tank (go check outside). But, if you actually followed along with the introduction, finding it to be replete with factual and historical inaccuracies only to relish the idea of writing an email to point out your humble reviewer's misconceptions and snobbery, you'd fuggin' hate this record. Likewise, if you actually enjoyed that thing: we don't want you as a reader.
Excuse me if I'm a little selective in which faction of my demographic I actually reach, but, you see, I've developed a pretty tenuous relationship with Good Health over the past month or so, and I don't want just any underprivileged twenty-something getting their hands on it. The truth of the matter is, Pretty Girls Make Graves are in your town right now recruiting the disaffected, cynical, and pissed off to join their cause. Finally, another group that the impoverished slacker bourgeoisie can champion as 'a really good punk band.' Seriously, Tim Harrington's shoulders feel so much lighter now.
The album opens innocuously enough, as a bubbling synth rises warily up and down an infectious melody that lingers just long enough to establish itself before dissipating into a torrent of guitars. The knowing lyrics of "Speakers Push the Air" chime: "I found a place where it feels alright/ I heard a record and it opened my eyes." Elsewhere, an untitled epilogue to "The Get Away," one of the record's finest moments, exposes the 'epic' song's skeletal foundation to the listener for thirty seconds or so, allowing us some time to breathe. Fortunately, oxygen breaks are few and far between.
While underground America's musical landscape seems ruled by a vast court of unskilled musicians content with simply bastardizing their lo-fi influences whilst betting on the medium's once-staple-now-long-lost-and-forgotten 'cute and intimate' card (an infamous artifact from the early-to-mid-nineties which has recently been sighted somewhere near Olympia, Washington), Pretty Girls Make Graves wear their technical prowess like a badge of honor.
Though never letting the 'Guitarist's Grimoire' set the parameters for their sound, PGMG manage to juxtapose riff-concentrate with enough perspective and focus to escape even the faintest grasps of what could have devolved into 'virtuoso punk' under less inspired hands. However, the fact that ex-Murder City Devils bassist Derek Fudesco established Pretty Girls Make Graves only months after the dissolution of his former group, insinuates that the nine songs comprising Good Health were written in an inordinately condensed period of time. Where such circumstances are, more often than not, a hindrance to the potential quality of a final product, Pretty Girls are clear beneficiaries of this situation, as the short allotment of time seems to have contributed to the sense of urgency found in both the group's writing and performance.
Conjuring up a direct musical comparison to Pretty Girls Make Graves proves difficult, as the album plays like an aural amalgam of the past 40 years or so of rock music (though Sonic Youth, Unwound and Les Savy Fav all serve as dandy reference points). Similarly, it's tough to ferret a particular quality to scapegoat in the name of objective criticism. But, if there's any negative criticism to be had, it should be focused solely on the disc's hit-or-miss lyrical content. The unfortunate truth is that even a slight misjudgment of the line delineating revelation from callow self-concern can render a modest album/song unlistenable. Luckily, there aren't any cringe-worthy moments to be found here-- just a few lines written from inexperience and masked by singer Andrea Zollo's innate sense of melody. It's her commanding voice that's truly the group's most effective instrument, infusing the genre with formerly unseen emotional layers.
When each track is a struggle to contain as many Pixies-by-way-of-Archers-of-Loaf riffs and hooks as humanly possible in less than three minutes, you need someone manning the controls well enough to keep the music's instinctual and emotional appeal intact. Bolstered by engineering guru Phil Ek's gracious production (which never oversteps its bounds, more than making up for his overbearing work on Ancient Melodies of the Future), Good Health serves as a testament to the punk idiom-- a homogenate product of the genre's countless guises and forms. "Ghosts in the Radio," the album's obvious highlight, even boasts a successful Fripp/Eno-esque breakdown mid-song, indicative of the group's ability to meld rampant experimentalism with an evocative and accessible commodity.
Though not as epic and cinematic as the Trail of Dead's galvanizing Source Tags & Codes, Pretty Girls Make Graves act as yet another healthy pulse sign for indie-rock outside of M2's adopted garage-rock revivalist spectrum. While it's true that everything contained herein has been done before in some form or another, Good Health succeeds on its own merits due to its impassioned delivery and inexorable performances. More than just a faithful document to the group's incendiary live prowess, the record somehow approximates the environs of a good indie-rock show. That, in itself, is always worth the price of admission.
