Beautiful seizure is a most apt title for volcano!’s explosive debut album. It opens with bells, xylophones and gentle strums that are abruptly punctuated by Aaron With’s tortured falsetto and soaring psychedelic guitar riffs. Soft interludes are rich with audio artefacts of the music recording process. These imprints of clunks and crunches remind that music is a live experience and that digital mastering can be cold but not necessarily clean. There is a hook of unpredictability established upfront, an aesthetic of carefully orchestrated chaos channelling a raw current of emotion. And while such art/post-rock may risk lending itself a little too easily to pretension rest assured that these guys are never trying to be clever, they simply are. How else would their fresh sound, hailing from Chicago, have earned them the prestigious notoriety of being the first ever rock band fit for inclusion on the progressive electronic Leaf label?
The subtle diversity of Beautiful Seizure demonstrates not only the bands talent, but also a refusal to be restrained by neat categorisation. Songs like ‘40,000 Plus Interest’ and ‘Red & White Bells’ are grand epics, homage to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ and Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’. There are experimental noise moments like ‘Larchmontt’s Arrival’ or the atmospheric ‘Before the Suburbs’. Then there’s ‘La Lluvia’ flowing like a Spanish serenade injected with equal parts suffering and self-loathing. ‘Apple or a Gun’ fires a catchy two-chord progression reminiscent of contemporaries like Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol or Spoon. ‘Hello Explosion’ creeps in unannounced with the dawning realisation that the album is nearly coming to an end. I wake out of the dream with a dandy little song called ‘Pulling My Face In And Out Of Distortion, I Blink Too Much’. Here With slips into his freak-folk rap voice, further demonstrating his incredible range. He pauses in the chaos for a few gulping breaths, drowning in the musical equivalent of a riptide till it’s silent. I’m left with encouraging thoughts – just breathe, don’t lose control, and don’t ever stop…time to hit repeat.
Renae Mason.
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