Erase Errata
Other Animals
[Troubleman Unlimited; 2001]
Rating: 7.9
It's a bummer to walk down St. Mark's in New York City and see all the
12-year-old punk kids dolled up in the shredded threads, patches ablaze,
cocking total disdain for every sight and smell. It makes me feel old. Long
copping out to the grim reality of commuting, college loans, bullshit office
banter, and having to leave before the bar gets gonzo to go home, that
manic-tipped sense of urgency is sorta gone for me. Also, a decade of
Tortoise-ing has left indie rock and assorted sub-genres decadent, non-verbal
and completely without social comment.
Perhaps that's why there's been this dubious post-punk/no-wave revival. People
were all over the Bush/Reagan similes a year ago, and at least musically, it's
all come true-- corporate metal, synthy pop and the angry, newly articulate
underground have boomed. Witness Erase Errata, four ladies who rock harder and
smarter, and with better beats than most stunningly hung left ones. Combining
the jumble of DNA, the snarl vox of the Scissor Girls, and the leaping bass of
the Birthday Party, they have just the right ratio of catchiness to antagonism,
and they work it as a ploy for repeat listens.
Other Animal is their first full-length and it almost topples itself with
cranky excitement at the venture. No moment goes without movement-- there's a
sense of nervous anticipation in each drum's snap. Jenny Hoysten's carefully
controlled sing-speak vocals have that blessed Kim Gordon tunelessness that
sometimes stress into vibrato-heavy upturn. Her articulated sentiments drink
from the close-bottomed well of angry girl-punk topics: fucked politics,
capitalism, and adult-hating, with an occasional curious rhetoric about other
species' superiority. (C'mon, ladies, really. Is the Rhesus gonna fix that
warble in your bass cabinet? Monitor international food supplies? Hook up your
cable?) Still, they seem smart enough to shade the evils of the western world
in its sexiest time signatures, altered chord structures, and borderline linear
structures. To borrow some St. Mark's mentality, "That's using the man to fuck
himself." Well said, Sid.
Unlike Le Tigre, with whom they've held the stage and will be invariably
contrasted with in the limited lady-pool of pop culture's mind, Erase Errata
seems like a band that plays music first. Both will shake booties, convince
other girls to plug in, and make it on the cover of Venus and other
grrl-friendly mags. But Errata's got a momentum based not on star power,
preprogramming, slideshows or calisthenics. Like the Gang of Four, Josef K or
any band of borderline fame during post-punk's brief flicker, Errata pulls
energy from the ever-bountiful over soul of dissatisfaction we've hid in our
minds for the day to day. Channeled to a challenging rock context, it's
simultaneously dead serious and hideously absurd.
And that's why it works. Tracks like "High Society" expose the recording's
tin-covered gaudiness-- all distortion and mid-range-- which somehow robs the
delirious sex beat of its urge. That the song grows from a Confusion is
Sex-style noise jam only adds to the jumble as Errata spend equal time
rocking their cocks as trying to cut others' off. But man haters they aren't--
just smart chicks pomo-ing about with their patchwork.
Being that they do rock, and that they do espouse the lines, I fear them somehow
getting a Hanna-head that they're some kind of role model. One can only hope
this god-forsaken caterwaul they've produced stays true to its lean turn,
finding musical progress in changing times and not in changing fads.
-Daphne Carr, October 3rd, 2001