Denton, Texas, punk mainstay Mark Ryan (Marked Men, High Tension Wires) didn't intend to take Mind Spiders out of the studio. He recorded the self-titled debut-- a collection of lo-fi garage, glam, punk, darkwave, and rock'n'roll-- largely by himself out of boredom during the Marked Men's hiatus. When people showed interest, he found it strange. Then, when he started getting requests to play some Mind Spiders festival sets, he did what Cloud Nothings and Wavves did before him: put together a band that would later accompany him in the studio. But while Dylan Baldi had three guys on Attack on Memory and Nathan Williams brought two along for King of the Beach, Ryan wrangled a veritable murderer's row of Texas garage staples for Meltdown: an additional guitarist (Stephen Svacina of Uptown Bums), a bassist (Daniel Fried of Bad Sports and Wax Museums), an organist (Peter Salisbury of Stumptone), and two drummers who play at the same time (Mike Throneberry of the Marked Men and Gregory Rutherford of High Tension Wires). Talk about everything being bigger in Texas.
But the mob effect is well-placed on Meltdown, where most of the songs have enormous hooks and use the extra hands for a fuller, more powerful soundscape. The loud-quiet-loud "Play You Out", for example, utilizes the extra guitar well-- during the softer moments, one churns the rhythm while the other adds tinges of harmony. When it picks up speed, the extra guitar amplifies the volume, naturally, but also adds another palpable layer of power. As for the second drum set, you have to listen carefully for it-- the occasional fill or cymbal crash will hang over the album's continuous drive-- but the extra kit seems to strengthen each song's percussive backbone. That said, it's not entirely necessary to have all the extra men in the studio-- the supplementary cymbals that follow the soaring opening riff of "Beat" could easily be added in post. But it's an album of robust garage-punk fare, and part of the appeal is that it'll sound just as sturdy and huge live.
The majority of that energy and volume is stacked right at the front of the album, the A-side brimming with anthemic riffs. It's hard to take opener "You Are Dead", a near perfect bit of chugging, under-two-minute power pop, off repeat. Ironically, that opening song also points to one of the biggest potential pitfalls for Ryan: Several tracks on Meltdown hold a not-so-subtle resemblance to Jay Reatard. The hooks, melodies, and even Ryan's voice are eerily similar. See "More Than You", which has an organ-led balladry format reminiscent of "I'm Watching You". That's not to say Ryan copped Jay's style so much as the two men ran in similar circles and have always had like-minded sensibilities when it comes to songwriting. (See most of Marked Men's recorded output.) And really, it's hard to complain when the songs are as exciting and over-the-top as they are at the front of Meltdown.
For the first Mind Spiders album, Ryan didn't put too much emphasis on organization-- he jumped through different genres and styles. By contrast, Meltdown is organized with a loose sonic narrative. Synths start infiltrating the B-side, which works for the most part, but by the final track, "Meltdown", the live band is chucked out and replaced by a lengthy, unmoving, useless synth jam. And maybe that's the concept here-- that the album gradually "melts down" into Computer World-lite. After so much muscle, it's a disappointing finish (especially since it's placed directly after potential perfect album closer, "Wait For Us").
That sci-fi instinct to melt rock'n'roll into synths is at least, thematically, a good fit for Ryan. He named the band after Fritz Leiber's 1961 sci-fi collection The Mind Spider and Other Stories, and he's said that he loves Brian Eno. On Mind Spiders, he communicated those interests by including the word "spider" in nearly every song for an "old sci-fi movie plot" effect. That seeps into Meltdown on several songs, like "Upside Down" ("the spiders are all around") and "More Than You" ("When my head starts to crack/ And the spiders attack"). According to Ryan, it's not symbolic of any deeper meaning; instead, it's an attempt to appropriate sci-fi for rock'n'roll fun, as the Ramones co-opted horror movie imagery for "Pinhead" and "Chain Saw". And, until that last song, fun persists in the album's absurdly infectious hooks without being marred by concepts or meaning.
