There have been some thorough examinations of post-punk-- Simon Reynolds' Rip It Up and Start Again being the most exhaustive-- but could any study ever be complete? The reservoir of out-of-print/never-in-print gems from the fertile late 1970s and early 80s would have to dry up, and that hasn't happened yet. The last few years alone have seen excellent reissues of San Francisco's Units, New York's Interference, London's Lines, and Georgia's Method Actors. Writing about the latter, Pitchfork's Andy Battaglia guessed that the "post-punk vault... would almost have to be empty at this point."
You'd think so, but mere weeks after the Method Actors release, Drag City has unearthed another treasure deserving of a new audience. Formed in Louisville in 1978, the Endtables lasted less that two years, releasing just one four-song EP while together. The Endtables compiles that EP, a posthumous two-song single, and six live tracks, painting a quick, sharp portrait of a band that sounded like they were in a hurry. Chugging along at a palpitating clip, the group flies toward the sun of the Buzzcocks and Gang of Four, but something about their hyper energy makes them a little more off-kilter than those groups. Like a sonic game of Jenga, their tunes feel like they could spill into unruly cacophony at the slightest nudge.
That never happens, but it's not for lack of pushing and shoving by guitarist Alex Durig and singer Steve Rigot. Rigot in particular has a uniquely skewed rhythm, biting off his words in strident yelps like the Undertones' Feargal Sharkey if you cut all of his lines in half. One of the best things about post-punk was the way many singers-- Ian Curtis, Mark Mothersbaugh, David Thomas-- turned technically imperfect voices into weapons through phrasing and attitude. Thomas may be the closest parallel to the bulbous Rigot, who certainly deserves a place in that patchwork pantheon of inventive vocalists. Durig is equally creative, slashing his chords across the songs like a whip across skin. But it's Rigot's delivery that gives these songs a mix of robotic staccato and wiry nerve.
Highlights abound-- the engine-rev of "Process of Elimination", the rubber-band snap of "Circumcision"-- but the six studio songs are most notable for how little they deviate from the quality level established in the first note. The live tracks are less even-- endearingly earnest and raw but often rather illegible. A few little twists, like an interlude of Clean-style garage swing in "Europe", a song they never recorded in the studio, hint at some other places this band could've gone. But as a self-contained document of a lightning-quick, pretension-free moment in time, The Endtables is pretty spot on.
