To catch the various, knobs, keys, and gauges lightly imprinted on the stark white cover of Sunset in the Eye of the Hurricane, tilt it around a bit, locate a bright enough angle in the room-- perhaps changing locations-- and let each ghostly marking catch the sun. On their first full length, Cobra High's willingness to insert such detail and to mesh equally subtle sonic layers into compositions pushes them beyond the faux-dark edginess of such overdressed lightweights as the Faint. Avoding the pompous caricatures of their paper-thin brethren, Cobra High's aesthetic know-how deepens upon repeated listens, their understated hooks lodging themselves into your frontal lobe through their integral placement. Featuring eight tracks roaming in and around analog synth and drum machine, all spun through guitar, bass, and actual drums, this two-year-old Seattle four piece channels New Order, Roxy Music, Cabaret Voltaire, Pere Ubu, and some less vaunted 1980s Midwestern scavengers.
The album begins with three solid tracks that don't stutter anywhere in their pronunciation of that decade's more interesting half. "Paper Gods" inaugurates the underkill with a flashback sounding much like The Damned's "Smash It Up". Beyond this ringing synth introduction, the track shifts focus to a rave-up akin to the vastly forgotten Naked Raygun. In fact, Naked Raygun vocalist Jeff Pezzati is one of the better comparisons for Justin Schwartz's resonantly dusted baritone. The second track, "White Diamond", is a lyrically psychedelic dream-quest about a river; here Schwartz's smokey delivery brings to mind the stand-off cool of early Urge Overkill. Blend this with the rhythmically sublime Mission of Burma rocking along to New Order's stark ministrations and you'll get a sense of the track's overall arc. Rounding out the triad, the ridiculously titled prog instrumental, "Awesomology" packs a Wire meets King Crimson wallop, though, admittedly, post Trans Am's agonizingly ironic posturing, I can muster no love for the vocorder. Still, with two strikes against it, the track is a sloppily pretty whirling dervish that would've been better served if named after the evocative album title.
But Cobra High set the bar too high, and much of the remainder of Sunset in the Eye of the Hurricane falters. "Black Boomerang", for example, errs noticeably on the side of that particular Luxx brand of new wave. Here, the rock resonances of "Paper Gods" and "White Diamond" are ditched in favor of mewling Faint-styled ponderousness; like much of that abyssmal genre, it sounds like incidental music to low-budget film noir. "El Fang Dorado", on the other hand, does bring the rock, but by fixating on naval-gazing math dynamics and not the outward-looking old-school charisma of the stronger work, it turns into anonymous Breadwinner aping by guys with too much time on their hands to practice their scales. Worst of all, the album peters out sourly with "A Leaded Trace", a maudlin dear-mom-and-dad bit centered around piano, distant "angelic" vocals, and a half-assed sing-a-long. The wimpiest XTC was more explosive.
Not that it's all shit after the handshake: "A Cut of the Money" smartly manages the band's varied ingredients, treading a rich liminal space between each layer, carving-out five minutes of hooky artiness honing-in on and honoring the furious noisemaking of Pere Ubu's Pennsylvania. Moments like this confirm suspicions that the stronger tracks weren't a fluke.
Despite the missteps, Cobra High make it plainly obvious that too many over-determined contemporary pretenders are pillaging the wrong paths through borrowed '80s record collections. For those who've always like more rock and less hairspray, you'd do yourself some historical good if you searched out Sunset in the Eye of the Hurricane along with the band's self-titled EP on Grand Mal. While you're at it, why not absorb a bit of the band's smartly evoked influences?
