It has now been overcast for seventeen days. The weather alternates between mist and rain, with the occasional misty rain. The uniform grey of the sky is broken by the curdling of darker clouds, mottled into frowning face patterns. The only things falling from the sky more regularly than raindrops are suicidal jumpers. This is depressing weather. Listening to another Slinty, uncheerful band is not recommended, but here I am taking in Stereobate's debut, Selling Out in the Silent Era.

Actually, it's better than hearing some happy band with yet another take on the Brian Wilson/Beatles angle, trying vainly to cast their sunlight through the clouds. Stereobate accompany this weather, and allow me to rage against the dimming of the light. (Quick point: since I won't be paraphrasing Dylan Thomas too often, I should mention here that Rodney Dangerfield gives a killer reading of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" in the movie Back to School. Check it out.)

Stereobate are a well-muscled band, with guitars that sound like angry skies tearing themselves open amidst squealing feedback. I do, however, like bands that can bring the party, and this isn't tremendously fun-- the tunes are downbeat and often overlong. The album cover is sepia, but the sound is a throbbing indigo, rippling with light like a burning oil slick. Tells you nothing? Winston Binch's guitar razzes with sparking circle blade saw noises, then plucks and plings with harmonics like a Daddy longlegs tiptoeing over the head-centered rhythmic figures. Though it's been a while since high school, I think there's some math involved with these rhythms. On occasion, Trip Hosmer's drum padding sounds flat in the epic context of the music. Songs should conjure conscious and subconscious images and feelings. You shouldn't be thinking about some drummer sweating in a studio. Perhaps it's the recording, which sounds otherwise very full and professional.

There's some good screaming from both Jenks Whittenburg and Hosmer (great names, by the way), suggesting the Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli circa Up in It. Whittenburg sometimes plays bass, and sometime a baritone guitar keyed to a low A, allowing both bass-like and guitar-like interplay. He also does the majority of the singing. Not that there's a ton of that going on.

"Let's Make a Foreign Film," one of four near or total instrumentals, starts the album well with a dark vortex of echoing sound clips. There's a warbling saxophone and a rain of white noise. "The French Letter" and "Club Med," both seven minutes long, bring more Slinty spiders and equations, wearing out their welcomes. "Jazz is for Russians," probably thanks to its change-ups (whale songs into bubbly guitar effects resolving into a thumping sunny arpeggio fadeout with a woman discussing golf) and brevity, is the most interesting of the instrumentals.

Of the vocal numbers, "Here, Bass" (great screams) and "T.L.T." are the strongest, if only because they rock. On the former, scary cinema sounds undulate while the drums pummel and the bass bounces intelligently in rumbling, Fugazzic majesty; on the latter, processed guitars whir like UFO propellers, then buzz like a bee storm in Led Zeppelin Canyon. Hosmer lays into a Jon Bonham beat as Jimmy Page-like chords twist and descend in featherlike arcs.

Selling Out in the Silent Era trips over itself with "When Radio Came," the (again!) seven-minute lament of the band's unmarketability in an age of videogenic shallowness. Despite some more good screams, Stereobate cannot wring any new juice from the unfortunate "Video Killed the Radio Star" subject matter. They even sing in the chorus, "Somebody killed that radio," as if we didn't already know it was video that killed it, as if they haven't just been singing earnestly about how video came along and did all these evil things. It Buggles the mind.

"Jerry Jones" is another impossibly lengthy track, with the music reflecting the lyrics: "Apprehension. Nervous tension. Falling forward." The song is jerky, twitching, angry, and not entirely pleasant. It kicks into a rolling bridge, which reinforces the angry thrashing of the chorus when it returns. It's a song that sells its own difficulty, something the album as a whole cannot do. Stereobate have energy and some interesting changes, but they need to develop brevity and shed some influences. Perhaps get a bit sunnier.

-Dan Kilian