Somewhere between Hit Man Dreams (1997) and Fire in the City of Automatons (1999), No Knife became boring. It was a subtle, insidious change that could have been the result of Greg Wales taking on production duties, or Chris Prescott's increasingly subdued drum work, but it might have been something far more sinister: a quest for accessibility. The more polished No Knife are easier to listen to, but their shiny, post-punk-flavored morsels suit a wider variety of palettes because they're more agreeably bland.
The oddest thing is that on the surface, No Knife are improving. Musically, artistically, and thematically, the San Diego quartet expanded their horizons on Fire in the City of Automatons; they slowed things down a bit, tried their hand at a few melancholy downtempo cuts, and still managed to bend the music to their aggressive, slightly-askew guitar rock aesthetic. But it didn't quite work. Fire lacked their singularly awkward, shambling gait, the rougher edges of their earliest recordings. Riot For Romance! was their chance to stop bathing, shaving, and flossing, to slouch back into the unpresentable slack rockers we were first drawn to. No such luck.
No Knife remains as clean cut as they were on Fire in the City of Automatons, maybe cleaner. Their signature, ragged hooks are still sharp, but no longer break the skin; the rhythm shifts and breakdowns cut on a dime, but they're weighed down by a sense that they've become gratuitous. A passive-aggressive rut runs squarely through the center of this album. Plenty of these tracks start angry, but they all cave at the end, in eerily predictable fashion.
The biggest miscues on Riot are songs that don't start at all, when No Knife explores their softer side, which unlike the more patient moments on Fire isn't touching, just squishy. "Feathers and Furs" is simply interminable: the same two chords are jangled back and forth until the end of time. Occasionally, there's a downy, 12 Rods-styled chorus full of soaring harmonies and cymbal washes (many actually pretty good), but I promise you'll get cancer and die waiting to hear it. "May I Call You Doll?" is, in isolation, Riot's most inspired piece (aside from the title track), a delicate, sorrowful instrumental straight from the forests of Twin Peaks, but it kills the album prematurely. The rush of energy that follows from "Flechette" seems wasted, and excess is the last thing this album needs.
Amazingly, "Riot for Romance!" is strong enough to carry this one through its bleakest points on its own. The vicious, saw-toothed guitar line that staggers through the heart of this song is more fascinating and creative than the rest of the album doubled, then redoubled. Along with the perfect mix of anger, desperation, hope and defeat in Mitch Wilson's vocals, the song possesses the strength to carry Riot through its stumbling, over-reaching tracklist.
Is it any wonder the highs almost perfectly counterbalance the lows on an album with such questionable aims? No Knife has learned to balance on the fence such that everyone might be included: never too fast, never too slow, but never daring or much fun. Perhaps year-round sunny skies and fair weather have finally taken their toll, but these guys need a knife now more than ever, to cut some edges into the encroaching, stifling gloss.
