VOLCANO!
Beautiful Seizure
Leaf
· The first rock band to sign on with the experimental Leaf label makes no concessions to easy listening.
Beautiful Seizure, the debut from Chicago trio volcano!, opens with just over a minute of ambient bells, chimes and jack-in-the-box plinks that wouldn’t be out of place on a Matmos disc were it not for the somewhat aimless guitar strumming. It’s a misleading introduction, though – without so much as a warning, "Easy Does It" kicks into gear, all cacophonous drums and sputtering guitars. Vocalist Aaron With wails abstractly as the music behind him locks into a hard-driving stomp laced with piercing feedback.
Then it all drops away, leaving – what? A vocal with accordion accompaniment that wouldn’t sound out of place in a 1940s German cabaret? Lyrics about a holographic fish? A pounding heavy metal breakdown? It’s a mess, random and disjointed, a total nervous breakdown of a song. But that’s to be expected from a band that has drawn comparisons to everything from Radiohead and Jeff Buckley to Deerhoof, Xiu Xiu and Black Dice. It’s safe to say volcano! will never find themselves pigeonholed.
Of course, none of that would matter if the music wasn’t listenable. It is. Beautiful Seizure may not be accessible, it may be unpleasant and even painful at certain points, but it is also one of the most exciting debuts in recent memory. When "Fire Fire" transforms from a haunting minor-key ballad into a percussive rant, it’s impossible not to sit up and take notice. Likewise, when With sings that his "minivan keeps breaking down, and I’m wallowing in massive debt, and college was the biggest scam," on "$40,000 Plus Interest," it doesn’t sound like whining so much as a full-blown existential crisis, the vocal delivery lends the wording a weight that they clearly lack on paper. Not that the lyrics are easy to discern. Although they are printed in the booklet, they’ve been transcribed according to International Phonetic Association standards, so anyone without a degree in linguistics will likely struggle to follow along.
That’s exactly the type of gesture that makes you wonder if volcano! is being clever, or just intentionally inscrutable. They certainly make no concessions to accessibility, and a great many listeners will be turned off by what they see as unbearable pretension. But those who take the time to reach below the more jarring moments will find an album that bridges the gap between the raw emotion and atmosphere of noise acts and the orchestrated drama of post-rock. It’s a stunning listen from a band that’s sure to garner more attention this year.
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