Amorphous left-wing pedagogy is the grist for the Rogers Sisters' rigid yet raucous post-punk mill. The efficacy of political speech in fashionable music, which flattens meaning into packets of style, is in itself debatable. But let's take it as given that dissent is more worthwhile than compliance despite its uncertain effect. Dissent doesn't make progress in individual expression, but in total volume, creating a sense of much-needed solidarity among its exponents. But it also must be altruistic if it's to even achieve this aim; otherwise, it's too easy to write off as self-aggrandizing.
Unfortunately, the Rogers Sisters' rhetoric, with its heavy reliance on the "you" pronoun, scans as less than noble. "Why won't you say what's wrong?/ Why won't anyone believe your story?" "You are living in the littlest world." "Look around, you've got no one to blame." Not only is the tactic off-putting, it's a bit incoherent, politically-- are the Sisters preaching to the right-wing enemy, who surely isn't listening to their music, or are they pandering to an already crippling sense of self-righteousness on the left? Or are they accusing liberals of dishonoring the liberal tradition while exempting themselves from complicity? A few "we's" would've done wonders to assuage the pedantic tone; instead, the ongoing impression is that the Sisters perceive themselves as above the fray, calling down grand proclamations from some superior vantage, and squandering any chance for solidarity-building.
I address these topics at length because they're so emphatically addressed in the music, but by no means does the questionable political content ruin this competent, lively record, which-- from a musical perspective-- is the Sisters' best yet. Recalling X's boisterous male/female mantras and careering boogie by way of Sonic Youth's frosty downtown cool, The Invisible Deck is a confident and polished record built of cavernous drums, simply slithering riffs, filthy bass grooves, and high-energy dynamics. Its structure is inflexible and transparent, with crisply delineated parts surging together in a wicked propulsion. The guitars are remindful of a more workmanlike version of the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs record, stripped of the inimitably zany flourishes to the bone-deep essence. The vocals fall in overlapping, fist-pumping patterns over seesawing leads and locked rhythms.
"Your Littlest World" moves as if underwater, with a creeping, reverb-bathed dub simmer that eventually boils over into crashing fuzz chords. The stylized garage-psych of "The Clock" splatters freaky guitars over a frantically thrumming beat. The dented skronk of "You Undecided" catches and flows woozily out of whispery sections ballasted by toothy harmonics. And the epic "Sooner or Later", with a sinuous haze of guitar emerging from and subsiding beneath the slow-burning murk, begs for an extended freak-out in the live setting, which is where the Rogers Sisters shine. Despite its didactic tone, The Invisible Deck comes closer to capturing this real-time energy than anything else the Sisters have put to tape.
