On Nobody Realizes This Is Nowhere, San Fran scuzz-punkers' Terry Malts seem bored. Bored with acting serious, with pretending to be well-adjusted; on "They're Feeding," even the act of chewing and swallowing seems to send them into fits of tedium. Word to Harvey Danger, but "Flagpole Sitta" was wrong-- just because you're bored doesn't necessarily mean you're boring. Lyrically, Terry Malts may trade in a kind of all-purpose apathy, but they've smartly set that disenchantment to a Ramonesy, "Who brought this chainsaw to the sock hop?" permabuzz. Even when they're singing about slapping the snooze button, they rip through these songs with a focus bordering on maniacal. Nobody even runs a little leaner and meaner than 2012's Killing Time, tamping down some of the pre-British Invasion mistiness and just flooring it. Nobody, at just 27 minutes and change, is an album about wasted time that doesn't give itself any time to waste.
This strange blend of disaffection and drive finds its way into lead singer Phil Benson's delivery. Clipped and impassioned in roughly equal measure, Benson really seems to care about not caring; in his hands, "you ought not take yourself so serious" is a stern admonition, "live like there is no tomorrow" a most forlorn-sounding YOLO. The first sound on Nobody Realizes is an alarm call, an unwelcome announcement of yet another day you'll be slouching your way through. Terry Malts describe this all-too-familiar draggy feeling well. But whenever it leeches into the music, Nobody just gets to feeling like a drag.
Every surface on Nobody is blanketed in a thick fuzz; fitting, since Terry Malts aren't the type who can be arsed to do much dusting. The grey pallor this casts over Nobody can get a bit oppressive, but it does the most damage to the vocals, often muddled past the point of comprehension. There's not much point in railing against something if you're not going to let anybody else in on the object of your ire. And when the lyrics don't come through, these songs seem driven by a fervor they haven't quite figured out where to direct. Even when you get the message-- work's a bore, hell is other people, moving my jaw requires too much effort-- it's all about the same; Killing Time's "Where is the Weekend" made just about every one of Nobody's listless points in 1/10th the time.
The playing's punchy, rarely less than impassioned. But the songs themselves are pretty much ripped right out of your pop-punk textbook, frantically careening from one power-chord to the next. After a while, Nobody-- frenetic but faceless, too nonchalant for true nonconformity-- starts to blur together. A song like "Well Adjusted", with a little more clarity on Benson's voice and a hook sharp enough to stick around for a second round, quickly recaptures your attention, but it's only temporary. Soon after, there's "Comfortably Dumb", its narcotic melody and tendrils of feedback lulling you into a boredom of your very own.
