Box Elders did not take their name from an early Pavement tune. The Omaha trio honored instead the insect that infested the childhood home of two of its members, brothers Clayton and Jeremiah McIntyre. It's an easy pit for a music nerd to stumble into, but aside from the tape hiss, the McIntyres' band share little sonic DNA with Pavement. Rather, they seem to be just a few strands or family tree branches away from another set of unkempt Nuggets devotees, Black Lips. And while that comparison is awfully difficult to shake throughout much of their debut full-length, Alice and Friends, it's kind of the point. However often the lo-fi patina seems to lend what's happening musically a cozy spot in what's happening "right now," it doesn't change what's under the hood: you've no doubt heard the 1960s garage surf of Box Elders before. It just wasn't theirs.
Of course, if you put together enough solid hooks, none of that would matter. But Alice and Friends doesn't produce often in that department, relying instead on the kind of raw energy that fuels a good house party. Opener "Jackie Wood" is a 75-second study in retro that toes the line between rushed and well-crafted pretty smoothly. But as soon as the McIntyres and simultaneous drummer/organist Dave Goldberg fly into the herk and jerk of the title track, they set a rhythm and pace that creates a hell of a traffic jam throughout both halves of the record. Vocals stacked on vocals, organs on drums, choruses on verses-- with the exception of some really juicy guitar runs, there's isn't much room to breathe here. "Stay", in particular, leaves little impression beyond a vague feeling of nausea.
"Necro", though opening with a really beautiful conversation between clean guitar and organ, pulls itself inside out and back again in a way that typifies the experience as a frustrating whole. No consistency. The lines "Way down in New Orleans/ Beneath the weeping willow trees/ You lay waiting patiently for me" might be painfully familiar, but they're heading somewhere. What starts as just another plate of sock hop leftovers turns quickly into a sweetly macabre take on loving a dead person-- emotionally or, you know, otherwise. The chorus slays, the melody allows itself to sweat some, and the song enjoys a simple twist on a formula Box Elders seem beholden to in so many ways.
Unfortunately, that sort of ingenuity comes off as a song within a song. "Talk Amongst Yourself" is a double-time disaster nearly identical to those of "Isabella" and "Cougars". Listening on headphones is a lot like getting the spins while drunk-- a bit too much of everything. The easy sway of closer "Death of Me" then is truly jamming, the staggered vocal coda, "We're going home," as comfortable and familiar as these guys were supposed to sound all along. Hangovers suck.
