Unwound
Leaves Turn Inside You
[Kill Rock Stars]
Rating: 9.0
What the fuck?: the one question any great album should elicit from you,
involuntarily, like a musical doctor's mallet to your mind's knee. Ha,
that's terrible! But, see, that's just it. A great album should have you
grasping for horrible metaphors that come nowhere close to describing that
ineffable whatever that makes good music so much more than just casual
entertainment or pleasant background. Yes, the really good ones make you
ask, "What the fuck?" with conviction. They extort feelings of reverence,
awe, and respect from you.
No doubt, you've heard that saying about the Velvet Underground-- you know,
the one that claims that, though next to no one actually heard their debut
album when it came out, everyone who did went out and started a band of their
own. I'd like to be able to say something similar about Unwound, but strangely
enough, it's to their credit that I can't. They do have the obscurity thing
in common, though I suspect that Unwound sells a hell of a lot more albums
than the Velvet Underground did in the Factory days. Still, while anyone with
a stringed instrument and opposable thumbs could have taken a respectable stab
at emulating the Velvet Underground's brand of frenzied noise, the same cannot
be said for Unwound.
Unwound is rock and roll, but only loosely speaking. It's often very
aggressive with Justin Trosper belting out fractured lyrics like a napalmed
banshee. But their music is so much more sophisticated, stranger and original
than that of their contemporaries that it wouldn't be far from the truth to
say they've written their own vocabulary and deployed a new syntax in this
otherwise staid genre. Drawing inspiration from elements as disparate as
Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, the compositions of Bela Bartók, rock and roll
in general, and all points in between, Unwound have managed to rarely repeat
themselves and never disappoint.
In many respects, Leaves Turn Inside You is the band's most ambitious,
sweeping, and difficult outing yet. First, there's the sheer length (an hour
and fourteen minutes), and then there's the format (two video-enhanced discs).
Yet, for its epic length, there are only fourteen songs on this album, which
means there's some really, really long tracks here. And not only long,
but epic in the "Kashmir" sense. And within those songs, there's enough going
on to keep even the most attention deficit disordered among us intrigued.
Take "Terminus," for instance, which consists of three distinct segments. The
first is a 3½ minute-long, maraca-laced, frenetically percussive song unto
itself, rife with great rhythmic interplay between Justin Trosper's guitar
and Vern Rumsey's thunderous bass. The lyrics could have been plucked from
one of Gollum's riddles in The Hobbit: "Break me I'm not broke/ Take me
I'm not took/ Cake me I'm not cooked/ Fake me I'm not fucked/ Wake me I'm
awake/ Shake me I'm a jerk/ Wash me I'm a lake/ Make me I'm a crook." And
there's a lot more where that came from. The song then gets plucky, quieter,
and more tense. A phrase repeats itself with just a hint of cello and some
Rhodes accompaniment. With every repetition the cello grows louder until it
overtakes the guitar, drums, and bass completely. A psychotic string interlude
follows, and without warning, the cello cuts out completely, signaling the
beginning of section three, a pretty tune with a ghostly Rhodes melody and
two wiry, intertwined guitars parts.
If you're looking for another installment of The Future of What, or a
return to New Plastic-era Unwound, you will be sorely disappointed. Let
it go. You'd be doing yourself a heinous disservice to dismiss these songs for
not reprising the Unwound of old; there's so much in the latest version of the
band to be excited about. "Treachery" begins with a zany, Eno-ish synth intro
which perfectly sets up the strangely 60's pop-sounding verse. From a
production standpoint-- if not also from a songwriting one-- Trosper was
inspired by Woodstock-era psychedelia, and this song is one of many moments
in which that's distinctly recognizable. The band shifts keys between the
verse and the chorus, and the keyboard is brought back for the song's
infectiously sing-alongy ending.
In the years that elapsed between Challenge for a Civilized Society and
their latest, the band pieced together a home studio in order to emancipate
themselves from the time and cost constraints of professional studio work.
They also decided to step up in a hands-on producer capacity, though still
keeping studio wizard Steve Fisk around for his expertise. Ex-drummer Brandt
Sandeno and Quasi drummer Janet Weiss add keyboards and vocals, respectively.
But apart from bringing in the Pacific Northwest all-stars, having a studio of
their own has seemingly afforded Unwound unlimited time to see every idea out
to its end. Unfettered by the usual studio pressures, the band packed much
more instrumentation than usual into the songs.
Leaves Turn Inside You is much too massive and sprawling an album to
discuss track by track. There aren't really any bubbly or anthemic songs
(such as Fake Train's "Dragnalus") or anything of the throat-shredding
screams Trosper is well-known for (like on The Future of What's "Here
Come the Dogs"). The length of the album is somewhat mind-numbing, as is the
relatively slow tempo of most of the songs. But any loss in kinetic energy
is more than made up for by the august musicality of the songs, as well as the
sort of dream logic that pervades the album from beginning to end, effected
with surreal vocal effects and keyboard atmospherics. The funny but
disconcerting animated piece by Zak Margolis (aka Drowning Boy) and the video
short by Slater Bradley are great but, ultimately, just the icing on an
incredible album.
To be truthful, my first listen to Leaves Turn Inside You was a bit
difficult; I wasn't even particularly sure that I liked it. I haven't been
able to oust it from the stereo since. I'm convinced that, if you've been
following this band's development, the initial bewildered expression on your
face will give way to total enchantment, and this new, boldly different
Unwound album will have you in its grip for months to come.
-Camilo Arturo Leslie