Tyvek
(In the Red)
Cranked, cracked, bashed and frantic, Tyvek's second full-length pogos on a tightrope. There's an abyss dropping away on either side, an endless bottom one missed mortgage payment or judicial crack-up away. And yet a sense of manic joy permeates, too. "Potato" swings hard on a one-two pendulum, rushed as a late commuter, yet has time, lyrically, for a recipe for hash browns and a bout of make-up sex. "Animals" is as straight up as a hard-core song can be, its toughness undermined only slightly by the kitty mews near its final blow-up. Tyvek reminds you that the great punk bands had a sense of humor, or at least of absurdity, and that rage by itself gets boring.
Nothing Fits is Tyvek's first studio-recorded album and unlike last year's (excellent) self-titled effort, it was conceived as a whole, rather than a series of singles. There is more continuity in the songs themselves, and so, no need for connective intervals like "Sonora," "Tecate," etc. as on the first album. The other main change comes from a slightly reconfigured line-up. While singer and guitarist Kevin Boyer is still up front, and drummer Matt Ziolkowski still pummeling behind, there's a new second guitarist in Heath Heemsbergen and another bassist in Shelley Salant (who has since been replaced). The addition of another guitar seems to have tightened and toughened the band's sound. The overall effect has shifted a bit towards the hardcore, though Tyvek's unexpected tunefulness emerges in cuts like "Underwater To" and "This One or That One."
Of the harder, more aggressive songs, I like "Outer Limits" the best. The guitar riff cranks the song up like a tire jack, every rising note a quick, effortful bit of heavy lifting. Kevin Boyer, here as elsewhere, is more of a ranter than a singer, spitting out acerbic couplets like, "Twisted justice looks just like revenge/the cycle of violence will never end," over an aura of controlled mayhem. A weird sci fi interval interrupts about three minutes in, dissolving the song's fierce energy into a haze of interspace pings and hisses.
As on the last album, there are two cuts with essentially the same title ("Underwater" and "Underwater To"), but this time, the two seem not to be alternate versions of one song, but two entirely different things. "Underwater," coming first, is barked in a monotone by Kevin Boyer, over a menacing assault of guitar. Its imagery is harsh, urban, desolate, about empty houses left abandoned in Boyer's Detroit. The signature line in this song, repeated with sing-songy bitterness is about garbage, the "Safeway bag sticking to my shoe." The "underwater" idea, here, has nothing to do with oceans or flooding, but is rather about underwater mortgages. "Underwater To," is, along with "Outer Limits" and, later "4312," one of the album's two or three best song. Launched with power chords, it is much sunnier, friendlier and brighter in tone and subject matter than "Underwater." It's about love, more than anything else, and its keynote phrase is much more positive: "Just do what you want. Do what you feel."
"4312" closes the album in a cathartic rush of punk rock call and response, juddering percussion and strident, straight-up-and-down strumming. Chaotic enough that it seems likely to blow apart at any minute, precise enough that it never does, the song is everything you could want in head-pumping, hair-pulling, anthemic punk.
Nothing Fits is a quick hit of adrenaline, a battering, disorienting blast of surplus energy that channels, occasionally, unexpectedly, into tuneful pop. It's one of the best punk albums out there right now, a worthy heir to the catchy but aggressive tradition of Volcano Suns and Swell Maps.
DOWNLOAD: "Outer Limits", "Underwater To", "4312" JENNIFER KELLY
