Beautiful Seizure is the debut album from Chicago art-rock trio volcano!, and it's full of unpredictable, volatile compositions that sweep varying styles and moods together like dry leaves before setting them ablaze. Singer and guitarist Aaron With yanks and pops at the strings while showing off his versatile voice, veering between gently lulling and operatic from song to song.
While their many detours might have you thinking volcano! are freeform-- or worse, improvisational-- they're not out to destroy their songs. The melody underneath is always discrete, and the singer's croon is always grounded. After some tentative plucking and plinking in the opener, the cacophonous pummeling and wailing of "Easy Does It" slips in and out of time, making sudden stops for unhinged caterwauling replete with accordion. "Fire Fire" has a more fluid rhythm, beginning with a gorgeous anticipatory stall before the drums fade in and resuscitate a slippery post-rock specter, though not without a percussion break where With asks in a sinister whisper, "What's in gonna take to get your freak on?" before shredding the strings of his guitar.
Over the floating chimes of "40,000 plus interest," With gently wails about his broken-down minivan and the massive debt gathered from college, switches to Spanish for the unaccompanied vocal solo of "La Lluvia", and pulls out slam-poet inflection for "Apple and a Gun". The band doesn't just skirt pretension; Beautiful Seizure is a full-on wrestling match with it. But out of it all comes a stunning and consistently melodic middle ground that never teases or withholds anything, always sputtering towards catharsis without losing grip of the listener's hand. Even if With shows indulgence in the lyrics (or by reprinting them in fucking IPA on the band's Web site), it's forgiven and forgotten after hearing how sharp Volcano! are as a trio, yanking With up from "$40,000" by the scruff of his neck and tossing him into the marching chaos of "Red and White Bells", anchoring "Apple and a Gun" with an infectious two-chord stomp, and elevating the leaden title of "Pulling My Face In and Out of Distortion, I Blink Too Much" with a woozy horn section, almost inaudible above the arresting wreck of the finale.
