A Trillion Barnacle Lapse has gotten so much right on their second album that I'd like to first get some of my more pressing concerns about its few faults out in the open. First, the name: "A Trillion Barnacle Lapse" sounds like it was on special from Cedric Bixler's catalog of meaningless non-sequitur bullshit, and is the sort of name likely to get your record laughed at and then not bought. In fact, I'll go on record as saying that any bandname with "barnacle" in it is practically pleading to be ignored; I don't care if you're from Rhode Island (where there are at least two barnacles for every man, woman, and child, I'm told by reliable sources, but certainly not a trillion). Second, no matter how good it sounds, any American who tries to sound British when singing is subconsciously asking to be beaten up. Even Bob Pollard; that he managed to build a career on this is still one of the most enduring enigmas in rock.
But I digress-- having purged the, like, negative energy from my aura, I can get back to the business at hand: giving this Rhode Island five-piece a fraction of the praise they deserve. It's a testament to the solidity of Black Lava that the biggest complaints I can muster concern silly, superficial vagaries; ATBL have the rare skill to nakedly assimilate their direct sonic ancestors, succumb to a little bit of posing excess, and still come out way ahead.
It might sound needlessly dismissive to say that ATBL is barely more than The Faint as fronted by Mark E. Smith, but while the combination may be structurally facile, it's also entirely ingenious, and the description is apt. The Faint's synth-heavy electro melodrama is tempered perfectly by a monotonous, droning sneer worthy of the acclaimed Fall frontman, creating a truly schizophrenic album. The vocals struggle constantly with bipolar backing arrangements of vintage blips and bleeps and hollowed-out piano rolls, guitars that fall in sheets in time with pulsing, breakneck rhythms, always too subdued for the periods of turmoil, too accusatory, too coldly commanding for the moments of docility. The songs should suffer for this incongruity, but the effect is entirely the opposite; the music/vocal interweaving is almost humbling. It's the distinct sensation of feeling alone in a crowd; keeping pace, moving in sync, but never quite blending in.
Ultra-minimal, Joy Division-esque bass steers "Binary Roulette" through countless tempo shifts and melodies as the rest of the instrumentation pulls in all directions simultaneously with irresistible, restless force. The steady, spitspoken vocals could offer an anchor, but instead stand apart from the chaos, watching the spiraling descent with measured indifference. The music is entirely tangential; when it becomes too loud, it's simply shouted down. The lyrics themselves are graphic to the point of dehumanization-- "Little girls should/ Grow up to be/ Feminine-heterosexual/ With babies"-- and clinical to the point of sterility in a strangely personal tale of gender ambiguity. "With the heat of his hand/ He erased/ One leg of one 'X.'" The abstract is later broadened, reduced to the purely literal, forever holding the listener at arm's length with one hand while beckoning with the other.
As long as the vocal/music interplay is in effect, Black Lava is nothing short of amazing, but against the advice of counsel, they occasionally try to pretend that this dynamic isn't the core of the band and coast on instrumentals. "Beowulf... King of the Anglosaxons" and "Iron Lung" could stand to make bigger impressions; without a combative vocal melody to wrestle with, the musical backing is relatively impotent. These are fortunately brief, though; the fact is, solo vocals would fall just as flat. It's the conflict that drives ATBL; all the odd affectations they adopt threaten to push the drama to emo-ish heights at times, but they always overcome. If they can beat that name, nothing will stand in their way.
