The "buzzworthy" aspects of AIDS Wolf's The Lovvers LP are the basically pointless, peripheral details you've probably heard a couple of hundred times by now. There's the Montreal mailing address, the cluelessly offensive name, the awkward hairy-fairy nude photos, and the fact that Wolf Parade's Arlen Thompson helped record the eight tracks that make up the official debut (though they spelled his last name wrong in the liner notes). More impressive than geography and failed shock value is that half the group, Special Deluxe and Hiroshima Eye, moonlight as the well-regarded anarchic screen-printing graphic designers, Seripop. Visually AIDS Wolf exhibits that same sly Seripop aesthetic acumen. Musically, not so much.
Until now, the quartet's put out a split 7-inch with the Fugue and a bunch of limited, cassette-only releases. So why the fuss? On a generous day, the sound's a decades-late take on Teenage Jesus & the Jerks or a boring revision of the more recent Chicagoan no-wave of the Scissor Girls. I cheaply affix those not-quite-right examples because of AIDS Wolf's female vocalist, but the tempos are more comparable to split-at-the-seams Arab On Radar and a less technically apt Flying Luttenbachers. That the kids have been together since April 2003 but remain embroiled in such generic misfires is indicative of the band's priorities.
I'm a sucker for musical insistence, so I like opener "Spit Taste Like Metal" for its guitar jabs, spiraling tiny little needles in your ears. But even when the guitars are entertaining, Special Deluxe's super thin howls are placed at the center. (At times, she's wisely placed back in the mix.) The guitars themselves sink once it's clear the same line of attack is repeated from song to song to song. By track four, "The Hat Collector", the tediousness is grating and by the album's close, you've completely forgotten that they're playing. Following standard album composition tropes, the last track, "Some Sexual Drawings", lasts almost 12 minutes, as compared to the seven one- to two-minute blasts before it. (All said, the album's under a half an hour long.) For the grand magus they dig in and explore, but no more than any noisy-minded posse would cobble together if you handed 'em some instruments and asked 'em to rock. Please come back, Harry Pussy, noise needs you.
The formula? Wailed vocals, jaggedly angular guitars, tumbling drums, and pinball ricochets. A major technique pairs escalating rhythms mixed-up with Special D's increased vocal agitations: It's like the band's always building and never arriving anywhere, though rather than slyly confounding expectations, it's just lazy. Ultimately, the posturing that scored AIDS Wolf pre-release press may also lead to their undoing. It's clear the wild-child rhetoric surrounding the release of The Lovvers LP is an attempt at selling chaos as a lifestyle-- god, it's really hard to buy into this stuff when each shard feels incredibly calculated. As performance art the stuff's suburban and tame; as music it's weak, but if AIDS Wolf gets anywhere it won't be the first (or last) time style's trumped substance. It is surprising, though, that supposedly astute music fans can be force-fed such watered-down pablum when it's well packaged. The blogs and boards are already wondering whether it's rock or if it's noise. Maybe it's a joke? For now, let's just call it shit in wolf's clothing.
