Not to make like a late-night infomercial, but when you purchase the full-length debut from Raleigh, N.C.'s Whatever Brains on vinyl, you receive a download code that not only gives you all 17 album tracks in the popular mp3 format but also includes tracks from Whatever Brains' previous four singles. That's 12 extra songs! All at the same low price! There is one catch: The Whatever Brains that's on those singles isn't the band you'll find on their eponymous full-length.
On the pre-album tracks, the band makes like they're randomly flipping through an indie-rock album guide, creating two-to-three-minute ruckuses that bring other groups to mind while never actually sounding like one particular precedent. Singer Rich Ivey, at times, evokes a very excitable (and young) Mac McCaughan, and there's a certain what-the-hell slapdash vibe that'll inspire folks to pair "Pavement" with the word "slacker." But pinning Whatever Brains down with a catch-all reference doesn't do them justice. And, anyway, that sort of stylistic hopscotch was merely a warm-up for the stunts they pull on their debut full-length.
The group doesn't go off in an entirely different direction, or even take an odd detour; they simply use a much bigger map. It's a fitting move for a band that paid homage to an equally iconoclastic group, Minutemen, in the title of one of their early tracks, "What Makes a Man Make 'What Makes a Man Start Fires?'" The most noticeable, and potentially offputting addition to the arsenal is the synthesizer. It shows up on the album's first track, "The Fisher", and makes itself at home across most of the album. For folks hoping the group continued on their merry guitar/bass/drum way, this new member of the family might be unwelcome. But Whatever Brains prove to be adept at fitting it into their music, and tailoring their sound to make it work.
Otherwise, the shaggy, lo-fi vibe of their singles is replaced with a sharper, more precise sound, turning fuzz-covered tunes like "Blues Lawyer" and "The Future of Porn" into do-it-kinda-clean tracks that'd be right at home on records by A-Frames or Cheveu. If there's any genuflecting being done in the name of Pavement, it's solely in the direction of Westing (By Musket or Sextant). By the sounds of "Cousteau on a Crutch", they might (as Pavement once did) also owe a tithing to Swell Maps. But then you listen to "Bedsores", and there's a chance Great Plains and Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments frontman Ron House is their personal Jesus. Whatever way the group prays, it's clear Whatever Brains practice the sort of all-inclusive musical polytheism that's all too rare in the world of indie rock.
