Dead Letter Auction
Romancing the Actors
[Excursions into the Abyss]
Rating: 2.9
Life in the Midwest, outside of the urban centers, can be pretty boring. As
a midwesterner I accept this and understand the inherent advantages and
disadvantages. Usually, boring places just don't produce important music.
Not only is it often prematurely denounced as unsophisticated, but it also
generally deserves to be written off. Now Louisville is an exception, where
boredom spawned one of the most creative, prolific music scenes of the
20th century and beyond. Chances are that happened because many extraordinary
individuals just so happened to be alive in the same place and time. If
you're a normal-to-below-average kid from a middle class family, your lack of
cultural stimulus, coupled with the monotony of normal life, probably won't
cause you to create Spiderland.
Dead Letter Auction's Romancing the Actors has little to do with
Spiderland aside from the fact that it, like parts of Spiderland,
is loud and has quite a bit of yelling. This EP has much more to do with
early 90's emo and has everything to do with what boredom is doing to
America's youth.
According to the address on the back of the jewel case, Dead Letter Auction
are from Indiana, which helps to elucidate why they sound like a bunch of
friends who get together occasionally to release their frustrations about
their horribly mundane lives. For substantiation, I should point out that I
myself am a proud Hoosier, but I also understand the unfortunate effect that
this environment can have on disenfranchised youths.
To make a slightly hasty generalization, whereas the average Joe gets wasted
on the weekend to relieve the torment of his work-week, the average hardcore
kid emotes. This music certainly is cathartic, but that outlet of emotion is
completely one-sided. The listener doesn't share in the release. More than
likely, he becomes annoyed. The lyrics are vaguely political, ambiguous, and
generically angry. The vocal delivery is, almost without exception, in the
form of breathily shouted almost-trochees. The sentence, "We play in an
emotional hardcore band" might be presented as follows: "WE play in
an-emotional.(breath) HARDcore band." Needless to say, this becomes tedious
pretty quickly.
Fortunately, the guys entertain on a comedic level. For example: "This life
holds true to a dead act/ Drenched with stagnance from lack of will/ The
stick in hand is a crutch to reel./ Pseudo-solace," from the song "Of Crowds
and Curtains." I listened to the track again after having read the lyrics and
still could not decipher the above passage for the life of me.
The songs on Romancing the Actors, unlike the vocals, aren't completely
uninteresting, technically. Some of the rhythms and changes are halfway
engaging, despite the rudimentary drumming, and are definitely beyond the
average pop song in terms of complexity. Sadly, they're far from unique.
Mostly, Dead Letter Auction come off as less proficient offshoots of 90's
bands like Current and Shotmaker, and those bands never really offered too
much of interest in themselves.
The justification for this EP's low rating, however, resides pretty squarely
on the unholy production quality. The guys claim it was recorded in a
studio. Maybe they meant to say "in a giant Folger's can with a duct-taped
boombox." There are times when lo-fi production can illuminate and enhance
musical material, but far too often it becomes an excuse for laziness.
Similarly, the idea of DIY has grown into a means of rationalizing poor
quality rather than inspiring individual and non-standard endeavors. Both
seem to be the case here. If not, Dead Letter Auction have a completely
incomprehensible sense of audio.
There are people-- mostly support-the-scene-at-all-costs hardcore kids-- who
undoubtedly have a soft spot for bands like Dead Letter Auction. To an extent,
it's admirable that they yearn to be a part of something that they see as
significant. But outside of very specific social contexts, music like the
stuff on Romancing the Actors is of little consequence or value in the
fabric of modern music, where countless artists surpass the sum of their
influences. While Dead Letter Auction are presumably genuine in their
anguish, it doesn't matter. That's nothing new, and what's presented isn't
done so in a novel or noteworthy manner. If it satisfies and feels important
to them to create this music, I wish them nothing but luck, but I don't want
to hear any more of it.
-Michael Wartenbe