In 1984's The Friday Book, writer John Barth offers a salvo about epigraphs, calling the bits of quoted material "hokey... one more bit of window-dressing before we get to the goods." I disagree. But then, I've always tended towards indulgence, and I like it when authors (or bands or artists) layer a bunch of other people's words atop their own text, offering various paths to their own creation.
Thankfully, the Panthers are similarly unafraid of affixing disparate textual voices to their work. No matter which member you tap, the Brooklyn-based band has all sorts of rock pedigree: Justin Chearno was in Turing Machine and Pitchblende (and he did some stuff with Unrest, too) and Kip Uhlhorn was a member of The Red Scare. But if you asked me to choose which parent the band resembles most, I'd have to point at vocalist Jayson Green, guitarist Geoff Garlock, and drummer Jeff Salene, all ex-members of Orchid, a band that carried (and tossed) the flames of Guy Debord and Born Against into the late 1990s.
Sure, some people found Orchid heavy-handed. Why not? They quoted lengthily from Albert Camus and Jacques Attali. They peppered song titles with references to intellectual movements ("Snow Delay at the Frankfurt School"), applied theories to the lives of angry, good-humored punk-rock kids ("Let's Commodify Sexuality", "Discourse of Desire"), and the lyrics themselves were engagingly over-the-top: "I kiss the girls that speak Marcuse/ I kiss the boys that speak Foucault" ("Tigers"). As inspired and fun as I found Green's rants, the thing about Orchid that really allowed them to transcend the label of unsmiling crusty anarchists were their love/sex songs, their humor, and their desire to get folks dancing. And this is where the Panthers pick up the ball and start jogging on Let's Get Serious.
Yeah, they jog. Perhaps taking their name from John Sinclair's White Panther movement, or maybe the Black Panthers, or even the pink bastard himself, the Panthers still toss around epigraphs by French theorists, gangster rappers, and Situationist poets galore; and Green is still on about sexism, fascism, fucking, and being a dick; but the lyrics (and overall political approach) seem less confrontational. It's like the emotive angst of the early years has given way to a bit too much rhetoric. More sinuous and less angry than last year's Are You Down?, the new songs manage to move beyond the pit and onto the dancefloor, yet, through the tepid lyrical flow, it sometimes seems like the revolution itself has become a nervous wallflower.
"Thank Me with Your Hands", the first and strongest track here, is David Yow in a romantic mood. Somehow it also cops a slight feel from George Michael's "Monkey" (trust me on this). It's a warped, multi-layered MC5 shouting spree with some nice shit about slang and sleeping: "I was thinking we should sleep in separate beds, but the heat's gone to my head/ Let's get tired at the same time (tonight)." More blues than Orchid ever mustered, it's the Laughing Hyenas or some Am Rep band from back in the day; each guitar line's a trampoline, lifting the song to higher levels until things explode into total rock-out ballistics.
Equally rich, "It's Not the Heat It's the Humility" is noteworthy for a weird drum fill that sounds like a violent beatdown and the placement of Notorious B.I.G.'s "I don't know what's more important: my ego or yours" just above it. The vocal line and lyrics are a bit tired (some late-80s battle of theory and praxis, indeterminability, and death of the author), but the guitars, again, totally rock. There's also a change during the last minute that brings overdriven Moog and vibraphone to the fore: somewhere amid the sheet of noise there's baritone sax, trumpet, and tenor sax. Fuck Rye Coalition, son, this is what the excess of the 1970s should've led us towards!
"Post-Fascist Fantasies", which again has fairly throwaway lyrics, offers (to draw further parallels with The Jesus Lizard) an angular guitar line straight from the book of Duane Denison and, as with the other tracks, plenty of percussion (feedback, hand claps, and shakers). On "Sexist Not Sexy" the guitar tracks are upfront, kicking things through the wall and floor-- plus, there's pretty noise at the end: twisting buzzes stop and start, panning in the left speaker, and then tear the sheetrock into powder. Meanwhile, the final track, "Don't Be a Dick", offers this: "My trousers have a nice pleat/ And I enjoy my method of self-defeat/ It suits me..." The record needs more personalized flourishes like that.
All in all, Let's Get Serious is grimy, fuzzed-out goodness, and while the aural trumps the textual time and again (I found myself caring less what the songs were about, and for a band like this that's a crucial slip), it's notable that the Panthers can coast by on rock alone: this is, after all, a mighty rad rock record. Still, they have the depth of thought to take it further than this. Maybe next time, if they amp the political angst as loudly as the guitars, the revolution of the everyday will finally have its proper soundtrack.
