"I do not like change! I do not like change!" When Tobin Prinz hollered those lines on Prinzhorn Dance School's 2007 self-titled debut, he was speaking in the crotchety voice of an uptight conservative caricature. But, judging by this five-years-in-the-waiting follow-up, the line serves as a handy bumper-sticker advertisement for his own band's cryogenically sealed post-punk aesthetic.
If Gang of Four famously extracted the sex out of funk, then Prinzhorn Dance School suck the funk out of Gang of Four, retaining their violent guitar spasms, ominous bass throbs, derisive vocal interplay, and the claustrophobic, Entertainment!-style production, but breaking up the 4/4 fluidity into hiccupping, epileptic rhythms that, true to the PDS name, would seemingly require some educational instruction on how to dance to them. Where most bands reemerge from an extended absence exhibiting changed perspectives and freshly absorbed new influence, Prinzhorn Dance School remain defiantly un-evolved. No string sections, dubstep makeovers, or, hell, even a single cheery synthesizer line for these two; the challenge of telling the two albums apart could form the basis of a great dorm-room drinking game. But then, as that first record made clear, Prinzhorn Dance School's proudly spartan setup is simply a reflection of the harsh, unforgiving, hand-to-mouth nature of modern English life-- and it's not as if an interim economic collapse has made the situation any more promising.
And so Clay Class presents familiarly despairing scenes of "granite-gray" skies and "concrete hinterlands," while the band's instrumental economy extends to the songwriting, which can quantify the magnitude of the global recession in a single dispiriting couplet ("Got off the treadmill, treadmill/ Got in the breadline, breadline") or disarmingly evocative image ("A tin of mixed fruit/ On special occasions"). As co-vocalists, Prinz and partner Suzi Horn rarely play off one another, or try to assert their individual identities; rather, their disparate voices-- a withering, monotone sing-speak for him, hyperactive yelps for her-- simply deliver the same dispiriting news with different degrees of anxiety.
In the absence of any marked sonic or thematic progression, Clay Class at least captures the duo's growth as song arrangers, as they utilize their limited tools to greater dramatic effect. Where the songs on PDS' debut tended to stop once the duo ran out of things to say, Clay Class harnesses the band's repetitive bassline riffs and stuttering drum breaks to subtly ramp up the intensity (as on the extended shout-it-out chorus of "Your Fire Has Gone Out!") or uses them as foundations for melodic exploration: over the course of its five minutes, "Turn Up the Lights" magically changes its tenor from paranoid to optimistic without ever deviating from its core bassline or metronomic kick-drum beat. And with their usual matter-of-fact manifestos replaced by a more gentle harmony vocal, "I Want You" stands as Clay Class' greatest breakthrough, as the duo hew toward pop xx-ability by proffering a more personal, intimate narrative than their hardened worldview normally allows. Compared to the dramatic artistic strides that kindred spirits These New Puritans made on their sophomore release (2010's Hidden), Clay Class feels disappointingly stagnant. But it does offer encouraging signs that a blade of grass or two can sprout up from cracks in Prinzhorn Dance School's cold, concrete world.
