Black Eyes' live show is a confounding orb of energy: two drum kits, sometimes a third percussionist, two bassists, two vocalists, and a rotation of variable instruments. To the human eye, they're a funhouse of tiny, screaming singers twitching about with the herky-jerky motion of flipbook animation. They're a D.C. five-piece that sounds like ten (or at least moves like that many), and they promote an equally convulsive squawking of rhythmic, sometimes experimental and gauzy, dubby post-punk that sits on the same sonic fence as Savage Republic and Swell Maps. It's a spectacular, dizzying sight. But how do you properly capture this mélange of melodic chaos on disc without its accompanying visual imagery?
Ian MacKaye, producer, opted to turn up the rhythm section, and flatten the vocals for equal footing. You know: Fugazi production. It works here, because Black Eyes tend towards similar dub-influenced genetics as the aforementioned Dischord patriarchs. It also works because the screeching/harping, high/low vocal interchange has major potential to be annoying/overpowering, were the vox any higher in the mix. With these production qualities, the band is just comfortably abrasive, snagging against the mix of bent-string guitars and strange, trebly percussive clamor. On "Nine", there's even a very Fugazi-like drum fade-in, as a wall of distorted guitars and warm, insurgent bass pluck out their natty incisions. Particularly great is the bombastic disco skronk of "Speaking in Tongues", where two shrieking, e.e. cummings-possessed vocalists duke it out in a scribbled disconnect: "Some words if you use them too much lose all meaning/ Enough/ ENOUGH!"
Of course, it wouldn't be a good Dischord band if they didn't provide some sort of higher message, and Black Eyes' poetic commentary is particularly well-written. In "Letter to Raoul Peck", they sing voraciously, "One-sided politics sell boring records 'cause your vision's too cloudy and our visions are clear." Sounds like a thesis; though their vocals are anxious, the lyrics are delivered in cryptic, personal imagery rather than high-strung, broad polemic, and reference poets Langston Hughes and Derek Mahon.
This is the case throughout the record. Racism, queer issues, slavery, and a general sensation of imprisonment permeate their words, which are apparently heavily influenced by modern and contemporary black male poets and filmmakers. "A Pack of Wolves", which excerpts a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa, delves into the psychosexual nature of rape, and in this context, perhaps comments on the fratboy element of rap-rock: "What happens when fuck you I won't do what you tell me to/ Means that I will still fuck you/ Even when you tell me not to?" These lines are tossed breathlessly among the friction of uncomfortably skittering bass and clicking beats. It implies not only a profound cultural disorder, but refreshes the new kind of creative, full, experimental hardcore.
