 | Overall Rating: 7.9 Lyrics: 7.6 Melodies: 8.2 Arrangements: 8.3 Thematicity: 8.2 Originality: 7.9 Production: 8.5 |
A lot has happened to Erase Errata since the release of At Crystal Palace three years ago. The band has broken up, reformed, changed lead singers, lost a member, reunited with its old lead singer, broken up again, reformed again, and finally, after all this drama, released its third full-length, Night Life on Kill Rock Stars. One might expect their sound to have changed radically due to all these line-up alterations, but actually the new incarnation of Erase Errata, doesn't differ much from the previous incarnation. In fact, much like Broadcast, Erase Errata has actually gained quite a bit from trimming their roster: Nightlife has a tighter sound -- and a far better produced one -- than either of its earlier efforts. To boot, the band have decided to base more of their music on melody than in the past, and while by and large the album still sounds like a noise-driven amalgam of Sleater-Kinney, Captain Beefheart, and Cap'n Jazz, there are parts of "Take You" and "Hotel Suicide" that actually approximate pop tunes. Of course this is all likely to recieve limited attention in comparison to the album's unprecedentedly pointed lyrics, which constitute an all-out critical assault on the American political and social landscape, complete with plenty of condemnation of the current administration. Unfortunately, while the topic is certainly one that needs addressing, and while Nightlife is certainly more convincing and artful in its diatribes than, say, Neil Young's Living with War, it comes off as distinctly inferior as an instrument of protest when compared to the likes of Sleater Kinney's One Beat or The Dumb and Ugly Club's Mars, 1967, largely because the articulation of its message is neither novel enough to turn heads and change minds nor thorough enough to be particularly powerful or evocative.
Hopefully the preceeding paragraph has not given the reader any false impression that Nightlife is a departure, for that it certainly is not. As usual, Erase Errata's songs straddle the line between noise and melody, and while they might tend slightly more toward the latter, the shift isn't a pronounced one. Many of the album's best songs are the more melodic ones (my two favorites here are "Giant Hans" and "Dust"), but as on Crystal Palace, many of the more experimental tracks (most notably "Rider") are equally worthwhile, and often it is these which bring out the nuances of Hoyston's voice. Judging by its music alone, in fact, Nightlife could easily have been Erase Errata's masterpiece, but the lyricism here doesn't stand up to that displayed on the band's previous releases. It's not that Erase Errata has difficulty with expressing political dissent, either, which is why I find it somewhat odd that Hoyston would abandon the astute observations and clever social commentary of "Driving Test" and "Matter No Medley" for the tired, unidimensional rhetoric of "Tax Dollar" and "Wasteland (in a...)" (I'll admit the tone of these songs has antecedents on Other Animals, but I didn't find it compelling there either). In a nutshell, the problem boils down to the band's not recognizing that speaking the truth does not in itself make for convincing protest music: one must also express that truth in a new way that makes people see things diiferently and must avoid preaching to the choir. When this isn't done, the result is the kind of obnoxious punk-rock self-righteousness that characterized straightedge and, more recently, sabotaged Fugazi's The Argument. When it is, you get impressive, well-tempered works like the Clash's London Calling, John Vanderslice's Pixel Revolt, and the Decemberists' magnificent single "16 Military Wives" (and its equally magnificent music video). While I'm glad that Erase Errata are still penning songs as good as they were when they began their career, I'm disappointed that they've traded the eerie, mythological symbolism of "Owls" for the literalism of "Tax Dollar," especially considering that when you really think about it, the two songs can be taken to be saying essentially the same thing.
-BT
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