After a certain recent indie rock domestic violence dispute, bruise-covered limbs will probably seem ominous, or worse, for a while. Black-and-blue-- badge of bands too far gone onstage to feel pain, of fans in the front no matter how unforgiving the barricades, kids who could never call it a night without some solid contact from 10 or 20 of their best friends-- will have to go into hiding, or at least off your Flickr account. Shots of Pre singer Exceedingly Good Keex, alias Akiko Matsuura, will now have to be regarded with dread, not awe.
Still, I doubt Matsuura will clean up her act, or even cover up her act with anything beyond the green bikini top and gold lamé bottom ensemble she sported when last in New York. There, her band showed up a crowded field of CMJ noise-rock comers-- HEALTH, Ruins, Sightings-- by enjoying herself. Epic Fits is more fun than any number of last year's punk releases, too, if nowhere near as accomplished. "No shirt, no shoes…ACE COCK!" Keex shrieks on "Ace Cock." Uh, exactly?
Pre aren't total naïfs. Underneath their ultra-distorted, shrill merry-go-round grind (see all 47 seconds of "Slash in the Snakepit") are a lot of perfectly wound-up, hand-me-down Devo riffs and Monorchid rips ("Nope Fun", "Dude Fuk", "Popping Showers")-- the type of outbursts that might allow Matsuura to acquire her bruises in a pattern, rather than just here or there. But it probably goes without saying that London's new heirs to Melt Banana, who recorded Epic Fits as quickly as they possibly could in a frozen pizza storage facility, won't be seeing a lot of imitators. Unless you count hanging from the rafters live, which though she sometimes acts like it, Keex did not invent. Or even perfect-- though lurching around gracelessly is not an insignificant chunk of their charm.
By way of salute to X-Ray Spex, whose Poly Styrene Keex can sometimes sound a lot like, someone blows a saxophone on "Popping Showers". Then she blows it some more, and then some more. If Pre have a trademark it's that they'll derail anything moving. Pile-up's the point. Two bassists knock each other's riffs off course. Matsuura yells until her microphone distorts. No wonder they live for their live show, where no one has to pretend to savor any given track. Why bother, when another one is already on the way?
