If you've followed Matt LeMay's reviews on Pitchfork, you know that he likes the indie rock. Now the indie rock's liking him back: Absolutely Kosher's seen fit to release his band Get Him Eat Him's full-length debut. Tuneful, guitar-driven rock? Check. Earnest, reedy vocals? Check. Sloppy playing and slacker vibes? Ch- actually, no, uncheck. Get Him Eat Him largely forgoes the happy (or apathetic) accident and the facile discordant smear, trafficking in deeply layered guitar lines you need a map to follow, processed vocals, and intricately sculpted melodies. Like all good indie rock, it vortexes a bundle of touchstones into a nervous, jittery coil-- you can hear proggy Built to Spillisms jostling against the hyper jangle of the Wrens, and a virtuosic Ted Leo shouting "power-pop!" to a snotty Elvis Costello's "new wave!"
The geography cone is a snail armed with a fatal nerve toxin (thanks, Google!) that the National Institute of General Medical Sciences equates with "eating a lethal dose of badly prepared Japanese puffer fish while a cobra is biting you." Get Him Eat Him was shrewd in taking its name for their album-- these songs are sheer nervy overload, biting and stinging from every direction. "The Celebration" opens abruptly in mid guitar rumble, as if the eager band had been playing it for eons, just waiting for someone to roll tape. "One Word" is a standout, with a gliding lead and swift counterpoint staggering into an anthemic, off-kilter swagger, the music swinging in and out of phase with the catchy vocal line and its "haircuts and halos." The harmonizer effect LeMay often uses on his vocals sweetens up the squealing, staccato "Pardon My French", and imbues the already-overdriven "Bad Thoughts" with even more evil robot power. The pageantry is so non-stop that the plosive, almost IDM-ish serenity of "Interlude" is doubly pleasing, as are the pastoral jangles, frictionless bass balloons, and lyrical keyboards of "Early Scarlet Globes". In fact, I'd like to hear more from Get Him Eat Him in this more pensive, less busy range.
Jay Pellici's recording amplifies every spasm of pent-up energy roiling in these songs, and the young band's enthusiasm (LeMay is the oldest at, what, 21? 22?) is palpable, electric. A flurry of ideas and passions so hotly burning that they have to be captured right now vie for space, occasionally weighing the record down, but usually flogging it toward whatever blurry finish line college kids are chasing these days. I don't know; I'm aging out of the demographic. Smells like fumbling sex and drunken dance parties to me, the burnt-ozone aroma of youthful urgency at odds with the preternaturally deft, confident musicianship.
