Public Strain
Women
Public Strain
Recorded during the coldest months of the year in Alberta, Canada with producer Chad Van Gaalen, Women's sophomore record, Public Strain, instantly feels cold and blue. As the ambiance of opener "Can't You See" circles around singer Patrick Flegel's vocals, I picture myself in a car somewhere, sitting with shivers and cold, foggy breath as snow peppers my windshield. That I don't own a car and it's just now fall doesn't matter. I love the still, slowness of January and, even more so, I love noisy art rock with buried melody.
And then, before I can get a sweater out, "Heat Distraction" kicks in, armed with chime-y guitars and vocals made for the skateboard days of summer. The drone-heavy song, which is anything but radio-ready, is Women at their most accessible. Fuzzy and thick, the music of Women makes for a tough-as-hell game of Name That Influence. The layered vocals feel like distant chants and the noise-based compositions sound like a modern American version of 70s Krautrock. As songs swirl and hum, Duluth rockers Low come to mind, but only if Low focused less on vocal harmonies and more on gigantic, bass-heavy walls of Velvet Underground-era noise.
Holding together the sonic stew are well written songs that, with more jangle backdrops, would probably make for solid pop music. But instead we get a batch of dreamlike sonic curiosities that sometimes (such as in the song "Bells") bring to mind the more ambient work of 70s-era Brian Eno. Other songs, such as "China Steps," feel like drug haze nightmares, featuring grating dissonance and rhythmic plunks of guitar that create a soundscape perfect for stealing David Lynch's midnight heart.
What strikes me most about the 11 songs on Public Strain is how delicately the band compose noise, at moments expanding on the heavy growl of Sonic Youth albums like Murray Street and Dirty, but with less attention to peak moments. Words like "isolation," "brittle," "paranoia" and even "euphoria" come to mind as the very dense record plays through, Women expanding their range - if only slightly - from their excellent eponymous 2008 debut.
What we end up with is a strong and incredibly focused record from a band who could easily be on their way to a sound no one has heard before. As their ability to mix melody and art continues to grow, we sit and wait, listening to the band's two perfectly good records, knowing that the best is yet to come. Maybe the winter of 2012 will be their time to glow; for now, Women remain one of the great obscure delights of the modern art rock scene. 8/10
Written by G. William Locke