The famed post-hardcore sound of '80s Washington still exists, and in some cases is even still played in Washington. But that style has mutated in a dozen various ways, as is demonstrated by new releases by two acts with connections -- conceptual, if not actual -- to those halcyon days.
Supersystem, a D.C.-rooted band that's now mostly based in New York, plays that punky funk that's so common these days, while Mary Timony, a Washington native who has returned home after years in Boston, specializes in her own muscular variety of madrigal rock. Burbling with electronics and propelled by punk-funk bass and disco-tight drums, Supersystem's "Always Never Again" offers one of the more successful revivals of the early-'80s British dance-rock sound. The quartet, which used to call itself El Guapo, puts the groove upfront but doesn't slight melody. Particularly striking is "Everybody Sings," whose call-and-response chorus is a joyously inclusive statement of isolation. ("Do you feel the connection to people in the street? Not at all, not at all.") The band's music is reliably kinetic, and the material here is more consistent than on previous efforts. Not all the album's attempts to vary the formula are successful, but one is oddly apt: The old-English-folk tune of "Devour Delight," the de-funked number that closes the album, could be a Mary Timony composition. "I want to be in the garden of love / Led by a lamb and a little white dove," sings Timony on "Return to Pirates," one of the standout tracks from her new "Ex Hex." Lyrics like that, as much as her Renaissance fair melodies, have typed Timony as some sort of prog-rocker. Don't expect her to start writing concertos for rock band and orchestra, however. Despite its fairy-tale sensibility, her music is lean and assertive. On this album, produced by Fugazi's Brendan Canty, Timony's vocals, guitar and keyboards are joined only by the drums and bass of Devin Ocampo (also of the Medications). Ocampo co-wrote seven of these 11 songs, which have more punch than much of Timony's other solo work since leaving Helium, her mid-'90s Boston band. Even a relatively lush number such as "9 x 3," which ends with an ethereal chorale, drives headlong into that moment. -- Mark Jenkins from washington post.com |
