"I am on strike," Craig Extine announces late in "Volatile", from the Old Haunts' third full-length, Poisonous Times. It's a curious declaration, especially on the opening track, suggesting that there won't be an album to follow. However, for the Old Haunts, music is a form of picketing, not something to picket against. They're on a small label that's local to them; they tour determinedly but play independent venues; they have very few, if any, corporate connections. On their first two releases, the EP collection Fallow Field and the follow-up Fuel on Fire, they expressed a general unease with the world, alternately outraged and disgusted not only with the course of society, but-- more interestingly-- by their own inability to halt or redirect it, or even simply to remove themselves from it. That frustration sparked their minimal No Logo indie punk. Poisonous Times further refines and reshapes it.
Of course, there's a new drummer on Poisonous Times. Each release has introduced a new one to the band: This time it's Tobi Vail, formerly of Bikini Kill, who let's hope stays on for a few albums. She's perhaps the best yet, allowing the Old Haunts to tighten up their already compressed sound and to move in some new directions. After Extine lays down the album's best curlicue riff at the beginning of stand-out "Hurricane Eyes", she enters at almost double-time, completely opening up the song's possibilities. Her galloping rhythms push "Outside of Divided Time" at a pent-up midtempo. Extine seems to be stretching as well: "Hang Up on the Downside" is a rare acoustic number, although Scott Seckington's lurching bass preempts any ballad pretensions.
Their most diverse release yet, Poisonous Times finds new directions to deploy the Old Haunts' brutally spare attack, highlighting their swampy existentialism on "Ruined View", their mellower side on "Sunshine", and the spacey guitars on "Sister City". There's a tension in these songs that strenuously conveys the paranoia and agitation in Extine's lyrics, yet over the course of the album, that dynamic occasionally flags as too many of these songs run on long after they've presented and re-presented their ideas. There's a great two-and-a-half-minute single in "Volatile", which unfortunately clocks in at four and a half minutes. And no way should "In Revolt" or "Knives on the Mind" or really any song on Poisonous Times exceed three and a half minutes tops. As the band grows increasingly adventurous, Extine is writing punchier hooks on "Ruined View" and "Hurricane Eyes", but they get lost in the sprawl of these arrangements, which give this album a slightly undisciplined feel that ultimately dilutes the impact of the band's protest.
