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The popular conception of Reveille might best
be stated as The Who gone plushie and inaccessible:
Roger, Pete and the gang decked out as avant-garde
wolves and bears chasing Deerhoof's sweet, innocent
Satomi Matsuzaki through the loosely-drawn woodland of
rock's glory days, perhaps even hoping for a pile-on
in the thicket. Mostly, it's a fair cop: the lyrics
and structures are simplistic yet evocative, John
Dieterich and Greg Saunier do pretty good
impersonations of Pete Townsend and Keith Moon, and
Matsuzaki's blooming voice has a certain skip to it
that appears all the more vulnerable in the midst of
the bombast generated by John, Greg and the countless
incidental sounds of organs, bells, buzzes and more.
Like smoke signals drifting upwards while the forest
burns, it's a frenzied, theatrical sound that results
in comparisons to a fairy-tale gone awry.
But...inaccessible? I'll admit that I usually care as
much about accessibility as I do electability -- if I
had my way I'd shoot you all full of Largactil, tie
you to your respective chairs and feed you an
onslaught of contemporary free jazz, experimental
electronica, political criticism and whatever other
various noises I could dig up -- but this album isn't
as difficult as any of that. Sure, at first listen it
might sound a little discordant and skittish, but
there is a form here. If you find Reveille's
careening two minute masterpieces hard to swallow,
think of them as songs that resist endings. In many
ways, these are all beginnings -- occasionally
interludes -- often two or three or more squeezed into
one song. They may run out of time, but there's a
sense that they have been plucked rather than fallen
from the vine. Throughout, ideas spring up and
collapse; no phrase stands a chance of getting old
enough to get comfortable and the songs become as
valuable for their brevity as they are for their sweet
racket.
It's this refusal to properly conclude that maddens
us; for some reason, many of us find them impolite.
Perhaps after countless neatly-packaged songs we've
become so accustomed to well-mannered pop that we've
forgotten what a song can be. With
Reveille, we are constantly inhaling, strained
to excess with vitality and oxygen for nearly 33 and a half
minutes. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but
damned if it isn't invigorating.
These songs don't care if we're dancing, driving,
doing our homework, or filing our tax returns. "This
Magnificent Bird Will Rise" is the song I want playing
when OBL and the Axis of Evil finally figure out how to
do us all in. "Punch Buggy Valves" is a gang of
coked-up prankster clowns shuffling down an urban
street, tweaking and banging whatever needs tweaking
and banging. "Holy Night Fever" is see-thru rock and
roll, all sinew and bravado miraculously corralled
into a proper melody. "Frenzied Handsome, Hello!" is
the barbarian horde riding down from the mountaintops,
smiting the staid and commonplace with cries of
redemption and glory. "Cooper" is the rusted Monte
Carlo that you strapped onto a jet engine and let
loose in the desert. Each song is unapologetic,
unpretentious and practiced.
Reveille is big the way an infant is big:
every door is open, every road untraveled; the
possibilities are incomprehensible. It is innocent and
manipulative all at once, and stronger than you could
imagine for something so small. It is maniacal,
perhaps, but hardly murderous. It celebrates the
off-kilter, the all-too human, the beautiful mess we
call life and its sticky, poorly edited rule book. And
while it's probably carried me away, for the sake of
the band and your own enjoyment, resist the temptation
to make too much of this recording. Sure, there are
probably a few of you out there writing doctoral
theses on Reveille's debt to the Book of
Revelation -- and if that's your thing, hey, take a
swing at it, particularly if it's the thesis you've put
off for the last seven years. In other words, do as
they do: talk a little less, act a little more, resist
the temptation to "wrap it all up" even if it seems a
little strange at first. If you decide to dig in,
there's plenty here for you; post-apocalyptic musings
and the perversions of old rock stars (and critics)
are just the beginning. Reveille may not have a
twist-off cap, but it's the rush you'll spend the rest
of your life trying to replicate until you're face
down in some poor schlub's backyard, being jostled
awake by three scared suburban cops, guns drawn,
backup on the way, old Pixies and Tortoise CDs
scattered about. What's more essential than that?
-- Evanston Wade
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