Blonde Redhead – Fake Can Be Just As Good LP

Description

It seems like New York trioBlonde Redheadhave been dogged withSonic Youthcomparisons since the day they formed years ago, taking their name from an old song byNo New YorkfavesDNA. Such yakking only grew louder when the group, then a quartet, signed withSteve Shelley‘s Smells Like label in 1994 for a pair of LPs, and then let theSonic Youthdrummer produce them. Three years down the road, it’s a resemblance still firmly in place onFake Can Be Just as Good, despite the group employing producerJohn Goodmansonand switching labels to Chicago’s venerable, powerful Touch & Go. But if this stubborn outfit of two handsome Italian-Americans and a pretty Japanese-American doesn’t care about being branded copycats, and it seems they don’t, then neither should anyone else. Improving with each release, the solid, crashing duo of guitarists (and alternating singers)Kazu MakinoandAmedeo Pacemay borrow an ethic, an anti-pop stance, and atonal tension that’s super-familiar, but the clean sound, direct attack, and straightforward, tense delivery are all their own. Moreover, there’s plenty of room for further exploration in these dark, forbidding, tempest-ridden post-punk seas. In fact, whenMakinoandPaceget cold, claustrophobic, weird, wired, and chilling (with help from borrowedUnwoundbassistVern Rumsey) is when they also nearly explode in deep undercurrents: see the best things here, the quietly terrified “Symphony of Treble” and “Bipolar.” And unlike 95 percent of all bands based on the New York noise tradition,Blonde Redheadnever just grind like nails to chalkboards — their well-produced sound is never annoying or unpleasant — nor forget that music is supposed to have hooks, no matter how much it eschews obvious pop melodic conventions. Far from mere protgs of any band or scene,Blonde Redheadare a unique sub-branch all their own on a fertile tree. – All Music Guide