Punk generally doesn’t occupy a space in my heart. Whenever I listen to it, I think of un-challenging music played for people who politely subvert the system. My idea is that an anti-capitalist band plays its music for other anti-capitalists and in the process not offending anyone but playing so much to its base that it is silly. This gives me the impression that a lot more punk has this smug, distant attitude, though occasionally some bands rise above this problem.
Some punk manages to be weird enough to attract my attention. Swell Maps is one of those rare bands. Blending together a blatant disregard for coherence matched with drunken, shouted vocals and stumbling more often than not on genius, it is a great thrill to behold. I’m aware that the classification for these guys always veers between punk and post-punk, but what do those “posts” even mean?
They begin the record off in weird fashion, with a sustained organ sound. Random noises pop in, like they are fixing a bike. A beat starts up, like the drummer just got told that the song began halfway in. “Border Country” and “Cake Shop” come closest to actual, fully fledged songs. I don’t know why, but the delivery really wins me over. Both of these have great, huggable melodies and display how they could make a normal-ish song when they wanted to.
“Helicopter Spies” defines them best as a band. Sort of dragging along with lots of discordant noise, it has a lot of energy. The vocals are too low in the mix yet you can tell they are trying their best to raise above all the noise surrounding them, and failing. “Collision with a Frogman…” shows off how they could write a decent instrumental complete with dark undertones. After this comes, the groove gets deconstructed by the next song, as they blast it apart into a million little pieces.
Towards the end of the album, we get “Secret Island” which has vocals which resemble the zombie Beach Boys. At the very end you get “Blenheim Shots” which seems so loud that they felt the need to record this from far away, like if the microphone got too close it would be destroyed.
If you’re lucky enough to get the bonus tracks, you’re treated to the loudest single “Let’s Build a Car” and the meandering weirdness of “The Stairs are like an avalanche”.
I kind of wish these guys came out with more than two albums. They clearly enjoyed writing this stuff. Shining through each song is their ability to take the ethos of “Do-It Yourself” and apply it to literally whatever they could. Compared to “Trip to Marineville” this feels a little more coherent, with some of the more sprawling tendencies toned down. Whenever I hear this, I wish more punk bands had taken this more experimental and enjoyable approach.
PS: I had a dream about these guys playing in my hostel in London.
