Once upon a time, Erik Sanko was the frontman for a band called Skeleton Key. Skeleton Key was pretty cool. They wrote good rock songs and banged on garbage cans. Capitol Records took notice. They signed Skeleton Key. And then, as often happens in the music industry, they fucked the band thoroughly and vigorously. Skeleton Key's one proper album, Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon, got less than no promotion, failed to gain the kind of support it no doubt would've garnered from an indie label, and was later yanked out of print. Skeleton Key lost their limbs on the battlefield of alternative music, and it turned out to be a fatal wound.
In the military, they have the Purple Heart for people who meet such a fate. A thoughtful, kind token to say, "Hey, dude, sorry we sent you to have your knee blown off in 'Nam"-- a gesture of appreciation for someone who was screwed over in service. The music industry has never been particularly good about showing appreciation for its soldiers. Unless you consider Jethro Tull "fuckin' hardcore," the Grammy is essentially a joke. Awards are only given to the so-called heroes of the business. But what of the wounded? What recognition do the poor souls who have been reduced to collateral damage by the thoughtless machinations of the record industry receive? Erik Sanko and his bandmates should have, at the very least, each received a medal, depicting in fine bronze and gold engraving a musician being brutally raped by a smiling record exec.
Fortunately, a little piece of metal probably wouldn't have mattered all that much to the boys of Skeleton Key, who have since gone on to plenty of other projects. Junk percussionist Rick Lee and drummer Steve Calhoon formed Enon with ex-Brainiac guitarist John Schmersal. And now, frontman Erik Sanko has returned with a pleasant, if not terribly exciting, solo record on a friendly little label.
Past Imperfect, Present Tense is a solo album in the truest sense of the term-- every single note on the album is composed and played by Sanko himself. Given that Erik is primarily a guitarist with an interest in keyboards and strange noises, it makes sense that this record would be a more subdued effort than the tattered junkyard jams of Skeleton Key. Indeed, Sanko's guitar and voice, with some additional atmospherics provided by subtle effects and keyboard flourishes, constitute the album's core. Sanko is, without question, a talented man, both as a performer and a songwriter. But, despite the fact that Past Imperfect sprung entirely from the loins of a single creator, it only occasionally registers as particularly affecting.
When it does register, however, it does so with remarkable elegance and style-- there are a few moments here that are absolutely intriguing. The shaky, slithery synthesizer part that appears throughout "The Perfect Flaw" is utterly entrancing, and the track is this incarnation of Sanko at his finest-- subtle, downcast, and vaguely haunting. Hints of this run through the album as a whole, but are rarely developed enough to yield truly potent results.
Much of Past Imperfect seems to rely on a similar formula-- a sparse, usually minor guitar figure, a shaky vocal melody, and some atmospherics thrown in for good measure. Sanko manages to use this recipe to pretty good effect, too, on occasion, such as in "While You Were Out," a song that occasionally bears an uncanny resemblance to the live version of Radiohead's "Like Spinning Plates." With "That Train," Sanko picks up the pace a bit, but the Spartan arrangement and lack of change in dynamics tethers the song to the tag "pretty good."
Aside from a few deeply hypnotic moments, Sanko's isolation doesn't really seem to help Past Imperfect much. A more diverse range of sounds would have benefited the album greatly. As Sanko surely knows, the music world can be a cruel, horribly unfair place. It's best not to face such things alone.
