If the participants in American Christianity's relentless quest to entertain us were given qualitative rankings, Soul-Junk would be perched in the upper echelon, if not at the very top. That means they'd be ahead of the Bush Administration (with its oil-anointed, hymn-composing, boob-fearing Attorney General, its Security Adviser seeking counsel from a pompadour'd televangelist, and its Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence seeing Satan over Mogadishu), ahead of great management books such as Laurie Beth Jones' Jesus CEO (with chapters titled "He Kept in Constant Contact with His Boss", "He Owned It", and "He Did Not Kick the Donkey"), and ahead of the film adaptations of the Left Behind books (still waiting for a porn studio to unveil From Behind, starring Kirk Rameron).
Seriously, folks: American Christianity has lead to a lot of fascinating art. Consider the untrained scribble-painting of Howard Finster, James Hampton's garbage sculpture, or the judgmental fiction of Flannery O'Connor. Raving campus preachers always seemed more anthropologically interesting than the nervous Asians cycling past them or the stoned malingerers flicking bird-poop at them. Check out the documentary Chase the Devil: Religious Music of the Appalachians to be floored by wild, sincere Christian music and its accompanying spectacle (get ready for "No Blacklung in Heaven", for Vernon Oxford's heartbreaking "Lord, I've Tried Everything But You", for gospel that sounds like punk colliding with John Lee Hooker's Endless Boogie, and for the "leper" who talks to Jesus through a wobbling car antenna).
This creative tradition could never have seen Soul-Junk coming. With some engineering help from friend Sufjan Stevens, and some sounds lent by a seven-guest roster that includes free-jazzers and vinyl-"users", Galaxalag and Sloro have made an at-times unlistenable masterpiece. I crap you negative: 1958 contains hip-hop so out-there, so deconstructed, so avant-garde, so every-other-term-for-radically-pioneering that all geeks seeking that sacred "next level" will consider it a harbinger of rapture deserving Pitchfork's sacred 10.0.
And yet, and yet: The huge step forward in experimentation results in too big a step back in grooves. The micromanaged haphazardness is impressive, even overwhelmingly so, but must every track pause, capsize, collapse, get pregnant, get spliced, and undergo sundry transubstantiations? I certainly wouldn't want this band to compromise their Ziplocalypse vibe by "going club," but the few accessibly bumping tracks end up feeling like teasers of how Soul-Junk possesses the production chops to sway the multitudes. I mean, the awesome "World's Loudest Ventriloquist" samples ducks and elephants to go with its synthesizer squeals!
Free-formity is their ethos: Like many of its neighbors, "Nerve and Gall" sees no need to make up its mind about how much to echo, or multi-track, or pitch-shift, or overlap, its vox. Like several of its brethren, "Sabor" suggests a digital Beefheart leading a Bible-camp Boredoms. "Hogging All the Islands" ends with a panic-attack simulation of manipulated gasps (no faxlung in heaven?). Your CD rack will wonder aloud if you are listening to Raymond Scott's audition to join the Bomb Squad.
When I reviewed 1957, Junkheads came out of yon woods to tell me I got their discography scheme wrong (the albums start at 1950 and go forward while EPs and singles go backward to 1938-- how you like me now?) and to warn me that their concerts were preachier than their platters (ah, but the duo is known to wear cardboard costumes like an orphanage Halloween party). The sermonizing on 1958 shouldn't ruffle anybody's tolerance or leave any Puritan blisters, as it is subtle, interspersed with anarchic wordplay, or just ill ("let the son of God give the spit-blood-dirt Visine between cracked lids"). On the flowchart, Galaxalag remains the king of the funky stutter and the baked slur, while Sloro is hilarious and charming as a kind of confidently awful eunuch-Eminem.
Computer-havoc beguilingly collides with Eastern/ancient elements throughout 1958, as if Soul-Junk is conjuring the logic of the scene in Jesus Christ Superstar during which the resurrected Judas wonders why Christ chose to visit when he did, since there was no mass communication then. And scholars are abuzz examining the functional similarities between hypertexts and ancient religious scrolls. Meanwhile, I hold out hope that Soul-Junk gets conscripted to soundtrack a Terminator 4: Terry Gilliam Debugs Pixar. Some jawas clearly shitwired this album's genius droids: its gargantuan beats summon a Messiah who looks more like an expanding Akira or the Stay-Puftzilla than he does the suicidal ninja cop from Braveheart.
