Raising the headphones to my skull for my first listen to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, I was struck by the taste of a heavy mousse or a rich pastry: I discovered the capacity of directed sound to inform an otherwise disconnected gustatory sensation. I searched out other experiences, finding that classical music whets my appetite for small portions of vegetable dishes and rare Japanese cuisine served on an asymmetrical jade plate. Jazz makes my mouth dry with the odor of cigarettes and a hard drink. Rock 'n' roll-- and nearly all of its substituents-- leaves an aftertaste of mostly carnal delights; a bleeding porterhouse, or at times a more elegant filet, wrapped in bacon and topped with horseradish sauce. There are notable exceptions to these corporal delicacies though, as rock 'n' roll has also given birth to the bubblegum-and-marshmallow-flavored emo-core scene, the Spam-laden rock/punk-revival and the saltwater taffy of electro/electro pop.
Counted among its differing offspring of rock is shoegaze, a sub-genre from which nearly any composition lends itself directly to savory desserts-- small portions of dense pleasure that are lovely in moderation, but can be more than slightly off-putting if consumed in mass quantities. Loveless, the Pitchfork-endorsed exemplar shoegazer album, serves as the crème brule-- the mark by which all others should be measured. This leads to a problem: the watermark of excellence having been set, the only thing left for its musical legacy is the tweaking of the established order in hopes of arriving at something new, if not necessarily better. This has led to all manner of ghastly cuisine, but occasionally it yields something palatable.
Initially, the thought of joining shoegaze and heavy metal-- a la Black Sabbath and Judas Priest-- is as off-putting an idea as combining dark chocolate and sweetbread, but the Party of Helicopters nearly prove otherwise on their aptly titled Please Believe It. Flexing hard riffs over a constant wall of feedback, Jamie Stillman leads his troupe through the album in a manner befitting the former drummer of post-hardcore group Harriet the Spy: upgrading that group's sound with vocalist Joe Dennis' roots in the shoegazer outfit The Man I Fell in Love With, Party of Helicopters push forward to pull off an amalgamation yielding some memorable tracks.
Sounding like an early-Shudder to Think, "The Good Punk" delivers layered falsetto choruses atop a fuzzed-out bass and pummeling percussion. The song spans a progressive length of over six minutes, providing chromatic runs and time signature switch-ups that serve to highlight the irony of the line, "this ain't punk rock enough for my ears." Further down the Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson ladder, "The Toucher" builds on a catchy hook that tightens and releases like a kinetic block-on-a-spring, over a distant hum and trite lyrics regarding a love triangle between a moustache, a little brother, and a loved one.
The heavy string-work of Hum is later apparent, on "Cover Me" and "Science Reasons", as are the stop/start, dense variations of Polvo, which rise on "Rising Up Is Hard Work (Let's Just Sit Here)". PoH wade into the dance-friendly waters of a swinging Dismemberment Plan with "Delta '88", and to a lesser extent the frantic bass of No Kill No Beep Beep-era Q and Not U on "Never Ending Cycle", which also features acoustic elements buried in the mix, giving the song an enjoyable organic base. Unfortunately-- despite a handful of soundalike respites-- the music tends towards an equilibrium that doesn't entertain beyond the initial shock of its conjoined parts.
Like most Epicurean experiments, novelty soon fades away to reveal that, from the beginning, the varying musical concepts were tacked onto a weaker-than-anticipated structure. Like sausage steeped in syrup and served up warm with French toast, Please Believe It sounds like a good idea at first but the thought of having it every day-- or even every week-- makes my stomach quiver. Another marriage of frayed guitar layering and weighty riffs is marred by its own overwrought fusion, a dish whose varied and potent flavors never resolve, spoiling what could have turned out a fine meal had it been prepared by chefs less eager to impress.
