Customer Reviews

Tusk

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Sad, so sad to see that nobody has reviewed this lonely little album. The Dead C are, alternately, either one of the most groundbreaking "rock" bands of the last couple of decades, OR they are a huge hoax played on the record collector scum of the universe. Either way, they get my vote for BAND of the ERA. Anyone with even the slightest interest in drone, heavy sound experimentation, hypnotic repitition, DIY recording, improvisation, and general guitar and drums clutter and clatter, needs to get their hands on anything this band from New Zealand has produced before they all disappear from this veil forever. TUSK, in particular, is a fine place to start. Sometimes executed with a quiet reserve that is downright ominous, the (mostly) lengthy songs spill over into orgies of feedback. Sheer bliss, but make no mistake, it ain't pretty.

Fans of anti-music will be psyched with these noise palliates, but while I am no stranger to atonal texture as composition, these droning odes to unhinged feedback come across sloppily haphazard, with very few nightmare-grade industrial pockets of hypnotic sound to thrillingly freak out to.

First and foremost:you either get them or you don't. I firmly believe that if you play any Dead C disc for a neophyte and they don't dig it, there is zero chance they'll like something else from their catalog. No point pitching what you see as the merits, your friend will never hear what you hear.

I love all of it, and this is one of my favorites. Marginally more song and "rock" oriented, I tend to play this much more than, say, Future Artists or Eusa Kills. I like the longish, faintly Neil Young-sounding droners best, but to me, it all just works.

The curious would do well to start with The Whitehouse, Harsh 70's or this and proceed in any direction from there (assuming of course you're in the dig it category) Potentially appealing to fans of (especially) Bardo Pond and their myriad offshoots, Sonic Youth's SYR series, and Flying Saucer Attack. Never ugly in a purposeful way and often stunningly beautiful, their best stuff lurches unpredictably from sorta rock to sorta art to who knows what Everything sounds improvised; nothing seems random. There are days when I can listen to 3-4 hours of these guys at a time.

I'm a big Dead C guy. My favorite Dead C release is "White House". What I dig about "Tusk" is the gorgeous blend of New Zealand noise/rhythmic krautrock-like drumming/basement psych. I think the song "Head" is the highlight of this collection. "Head" is a 12 minute psych exploration of your own bone marrow. Exquisite, beautiful/brutal, revolutionary.

which is the hyped Dead C Holy Grail since Steven Malkmus raved about it as one of his top two fave albums. I think Tusk has far more dynamic a progression of tunes, and the vocals seem more organic here amidst the noise. The synths on the end of the title track, the agonized doom blended into a free-for-all Stoogian (in both senses of the term) assault make for an enjoyable disk to accompany any stream-of-consciousness activity in which you are engaged. It's actually great driving music if you're in one of those Ritalin moods. By this 1997 stage in their long career, the experimental tendencies that dragged down H70sR, in my opinion, are streamlined into more linear formations which drag the songs past the sludge rather than leaving them stranded in the gunk. The band sounds like it's having fun here, and calling any CD Tusk and featuring a grimy line drawing (sort of Tenniel meets Gorey) of a girl apparently being devoured headfirst by a ravenous amphibious beast, shows the humor that lurks beneath the whirlwind of passionate full-on intensity that even rock snobs can appreciate as essential.

Worth tracking down as one of their three best--and a good companion to the more minimal and quieter 2001 New Electric Music and the far earlier Eusa Kills, both of which have a rather Eno-esque patina mixed into the more garish surface texture for winning effect. And no, the Fleetwood Mac song is nowhere to be found here, in case you wound up here by mistake.