IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN? by THE BEATINGS
— Feel Good Ending —
— Stockholm Syndrome Relapse —
— Pretty Faces —
— All Dead Heroes —
— If Not Now, Then When? —
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MDRF005 | AUG 2005 | 22:00 | CD EP
For those of you who’ve been asleep for the last two years, we’d like to confirm: the 80s are back. And we don’t mean the shoulder-padded Spandau Ballet variety – it seems we were only ever one Pixies reunion and a Gang Of Four revival away from the wholesale resurrection of the Alternative 80s all along. So, with regards to The Beatings, we’ll get those nods to the Pixies and their ilk out of the way early, if only because it’s not quite fair and not quite accurate.
Boston’s The Beatings … are the real deal (as opposed to the real Deal), having been ploughing this discordant alt noise-pop furrow for a fair few years. They’re not the bandwagon-jumping Johnny-come-latelys you might have pegged them for. If Not Now, Then When?, the band’s latest self-released offering on their Midriff Records label, is a 5-track prelude to forthcoming second album, Holding On To Hand Grenades, scheduled for early next year.
Opener “Feel Good Ending” is a take-no-prisoners turbo-charged stomp-rocker, and catchy as hell with it, that blasts its way to a climactic drum frenzy. “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse”, the other cut from the new album, starts off seductively with a breathy, whispered female vocal and laid-back bass groove, before breaking out into an assured shouty dirge-fest.
Perhaps the most alt-radio-friendly of the tracks, “All Dead Heroes” is exactly the kind of thing that’ll have the Kids in a froth of cider-and-black induced pogoing down the local indie disco. Rammed full of jaunty upbeat bass hooks, it’s all that your correspondent can do to stop himself grabbing a pair of Converse and hitting the town.
The EP’s title track, either the weakest or least accessible (depending on how you see it) of the five, while a decent piece of angsty scream-rock, fails to hit the spot in quite the same way. Still, at a 4/5 hit-rate, The Beatings are well above the International Meatloaf Threshold Of Acceptability of 66% (“Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad”, natch).
In the case of If Not Now, Then When?, take some advice: if you can’t take a Beating, you might need a hammering. You heard.
—Greg Smythe, Blogcritics
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Ahhh… the good old days of Boston. The days when you could stroll down to the Rat and see a full slate of bands, each with their own team colors, play noisy post-rock anthems deep into the Kenmore Square night. Too bad I wasn’t there. By the time I got to Boston the Rathskellar was long gone and Kenmore Square was undergoing its own miniDisneyfication into Main Street, USA at the hands of developers gone starry-eyed on the fumes of appreciating real estate. Galaxie 500 had bifurcated into Luna and Damon & Naomi (whom you sometimes see around, hi guys!). Mission of Burma (who have since reformed)had flamed out and one of its members was a public television producer. Dinosaur, Jr. had gotten fat, old, and deaf and spun into oblivion. The Pixies were about to get back together (via fax machine, I suppose?) to cash in on their legacy. Fort Apache studios, long the haven and home to whatever the Boston Sound was supposed to be, packed up and moved to a rural river town in Vermont. Boston still has a scene, but most of the bands that come out of it fail to move me like a hometown band should.
But now there’s the Beatings coming across my radar. Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie and engineered by Boston stalwart Tim Shea (of The Black Helicopter), the Beatings have a new five-song EP, If Not Now, Then When? that does move me, right down to the bottom of my aging, curmudgeonly, candy apple grey heart It is not damning with faint praise to say that the Beatings remind me of Mission of Burma; only rarely can a band pursue Burma’s post-punk ideal of brittle soundscapes replete with feedback, scratchy guitars, and dry vocals and have it sound any good; usually such bands just sound like they’re ripping off Burma with a little Pixies on the side. But the Beatings have managed the rare trick of appropriating some of the astringent, hyperintelligent sound invented by Mission of Burma but making it sound human, intimate, and alive in a way that Burma never could. But the Beatings aren’t a tribute band. Although they do wear their influences on their sleeves (touches of Radiohead, Pixies, Sonic Youth, and giant helpings of Husker Du are what I’m hearing), this is to be expected for a relatively young band working in a close-knit genre looming with giants. It is really, really hard to find your own voice and write original songs (I should know… I’ve been trying (and failing) for fifteen years), but four(ish) short years into their career, The Beatings sound most like… themselves.
If Not Now, Then When? features five tracks (two from their upcoming album, two outtakes, and the eponymous single) that are for the most part lovely, demanding, and richly textured. The Beatings are at their best on the album cuts: the headspinningly noisy “Feel Good Ending” and “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse,” each of which manage the trick of being simultaneously moody, catchy, and new-sounding. The two outtakes are outtake-worthy, neither great nor disposable, which is a lot more than I could say for most single-padding material I’ve heard.
The most interesting song, anthropologically speaking, is the title track “If Not Now, Then When?” A longtime live staple, it is a soft-loud raveup in the tradition of the Pixies complete with screaming vocals and dissonant guitars . Although decent enough, it is mainly valuable for showing how far the band have come in getting the arty-indie-edgy-for-edgy’s-sake thing out of their system.
Given that the newest songs on If Not Now, Then When? are the best, I await this winter’s release of their new full length(tentatively titled Holding On To Hand Grenades with ‘bated breath. These kids could soon be really, really great. —John Owen, Blogcritics
It really sucks when a band sends you a copy of their new record and you somehow misplace it in your office (which, in your defense, also contains almost 2000 other CD mailers). It sucks even more when the band cheerfully sends you another copy of the record, and you lose that one too. And it really, seriously uber-sucks when you finally give up on physical media, download MP3s of the record, crank ‘em up in the car on the way to work and realize that you absolutely love the record — and that you really should have spent the last few months telling people about it. Well, better safe than sorry.
The record in question, obviously, is If Not Now, Then When? — a ferocious five-song barrage that’ll take you back to the days when “post-punk” was an era, not a record store section. Remember how magical it was twenty-odd years ago, when the first few punk bands climbed unsteadily out of the three-chord primordial soup, discovered more complex songwriting techniques and ultimately revived an ancient art known as “singing”? The Beatings don’t seem old enough to remember that heady era, but it’s clear that someone raised them right — that, or they studied like mad. Whatever its source, their knowledge pays off big time in rip-roaring opener “Feel Good Ending”: it’s the best song Husker Du and Mission of Burma never wrote. For a measure or two, the stabbing lead guitar line hints at minor key doom ‘n’ gloom, but that mood is quickly dispelled by a rollicking, ramshackle melody, full of subtle melodic shifts and deep-running currents. Drummer Dennis Grabowski pummels his kit like a Mega-Millions lottery winner who feels like flaunting his riches and has just been informed that crash cymbal hits cost ten bucks each. The vocalist — guitarists Tony Skalicky and Eldridge Rodriguez both sing, but I’m guessing this is Skalicky — barrels through his lyrics with sardonic glee, slamming into his couplets with a sort of wide-eyed melodic fury. This is the sort of song that makes previously non-musical people buy guitars and drum kits and give that “rock” thing a go.
“Stockholm Syndrome Relapse” is an entirely different animal. If the title alone isn’t enough to hook you (kids, look it up!), the moody midtempo groove and subtle string accents should do the trick, Those falsetto vocals may be a hard sell, but Erin Dalbec’s sexy whispers balance the equation. People who want to hear a little Interpol in the chorus will do so — let them — but when Dalbec joins in later in the song, the effect is more Pixies than Paul Banks… thank heaven.
At first, “Pretty Faces” shows signs of being the EP’s dud, settling into a comfortable, borderline-pastoral guitar figure. Then, perhaps a minute in, Grabowski jacks up the tempo; suddenly the song is much faster than it needs to be, unless… Yep, something else is coming — a noisy, billowing electric counterpoint that shoots its tendrils off in every direction. From there, “Pretty Faces” effectively dissects the slow/quick/slow and loud/quiet/loud dynamics, first flowing energetically into each line, then ebbing again in time for the punctuation, leaving little noisy bits of sonic flotsam swirling through the mix. By the time you reach “All Dead Heroes”, you’ll wonder if the band is deliberately fucking with your expectations, The song’s harrowing forty-second percussion intro/classic rock lead-in all but promises an over-caffeinated “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, but delivers a pop anthem in its place. It’s a noisy pop anthem, and Grabowski gets his usual kit-punishing workout, but you won’t be over your skis here unless you’re scared of ride cymbal.
The EP closes with its title track, a previously unrecorded staple of the Beatings’ live set, and a timely reminder of how much the group has evolved. Once you get beyond the intro’s comparatively simplistic melody and unexpectedly venomous lyrics, you’ll be tossed into a caustic, blustery pop song. Even here, the band’s fierce energy and melodic sensibilities shine through, but it’s a rougher package, tarted up with reverb and screamy vocals. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with cutting loose — and even at their most overtly earnest and youthful, The Beatings never sink to abrasive emo-isms — but when the EP’s other songs achieve such a stylish mix of polish and passion, it’s hard not to perceive “If Not Now, Then When?” as a lesser work. You’ll want to focus on “Feel Good Ending”, “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse” and the others — they embrace post-punk’s exploratory zeal without getting wrapped up in the handful of buzz-traits that helped transform it into a trendy cipher. You may not hear If Not Now, Then When in your favorite nightclub or overpriced clothing store, but you’ll hear it on your stereo two years from now, when the cut-out bins are full of Bravery and Bloc Party CDs.
I’m going to end this review by giving you the message I can’t give to my six-months-ago self: get off your ass and find this EP now. The Beatings are prepping a full-length for late this year/early next year, and if it fulfills If Not Now’s promise, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about them. Why not get there first? Epilogue: Two days after writing this review, I found the CD.— George Zahora, Splendid Magazine
Don’t worry, the Beatings aren’t half as ruthless as their name might imply. This doesn’t mean that they don’t know how to kick up a racket and create daring excursions in noise that send their guitars into swirling love-damaged dream-rock. What’s truly amazing is how they manage to make their patented brand of emotional catharsis sound so restrained and downright controlled. Obviously, they’re not the first band to utilize feedback and overdrive as an instrument, let alone the first band from Boston to take a crack at this approach (Pixies and Mission of Burma spring to mind), but very few other bands are able to tame this beast in such a natural and effortless sounding way. There’s no reason to question their intentions as they grab a melody and run with it with such enthusiasm that everything else, from squabbling guitar runs, strained vocals, moaning note bends, and delicate whispers, all fall right into place. The only complaint is how short this release is. Even that issue is quickly addressed: this five-song EP is designed to whet our pallet before the full-length. Two songs on the EP are from the forthcoming album, two are outtakes, and the title track, “If Not Now, Then When?” is a previously unreleased staple of their live set. If Not Now, Then When? kicks off with a forward charging rocker, “Feel Good Ending” that gets the blood pumping in a way any proper album opener should. The euphoric rush of the deliberate and dedicated rhythm section give non-stop momentum to the crunching jangle and chaotic guitar work, that it’s nearly impossible to tell where the Beatings will be headed next. What they do is head into an ethereal violin and chant number, “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse,” that showcases the delicately unhinged vocals of Erin Dalbec and results in sounding like a My Bloody Valentine song that’s been dug out from under thirty overdubs. The rest of the songs fall some where in-between the styles of these two stand-out tracks; dreamy melodies, soaring guitar-noise, art rock perfection. — Denez McAdoo, Northeast Performer
This EP grows on the brain like a fungus; slowly, but pervasively working its way into your synapses. It would help if the CD had instructions ala the Stones Let it Bleed, roughly paraphrased: “This record should be played REALLY FUCKING LOUD.”
“Feel Good Ending” opens the disc like the bastard child of Volcano Suns and Versus, a relentless driving force that captures The Beatings’ live energy. “Stockholm Syndrome Relapse” easily a candidate for local song of the year, is a brilliant, smoldering study in slowly building (not so) quiet intensity, and the best track here. Fans of the Verlaine/Lloyd school of guitar interfacing will thoroughly enjoy “Pretty Faces”. “All Dead Heroes” starts off sounding like the ghost of a lost track off of Joy Division’s posthumous “Still” before settling into a dark, catchy groove. The title track, part schoolyard-rhyme ditty and aggro-screamer with wonderfully charming lyrical matter, closes the CD. Kudos to engineer Tim Shea and producer Paul Kolderie for the warm, thick tones that jump out of the speakers (again, the louder this is played, the better). — Chris Pearson, The Noise Boston
It’s a specific breed of monster that plays in a band with a name like The Beatings…The Beatings have no such trouble with incongruity, as Eldridge Rodriguez, Tony Skalicky, Erin Dalbec and Dennis Grabowski have been abusing and defiling Bostonians’ eardrums for years now. Their 2002 full-length, Italiano, garnered pole-smoking from the Village Voice to the Washington Post, and everybody in between. This record, a loud 22-minute EP, is meant to satiate the rabid masses’ clamor for fresh Beatings, while final preparations are made for a winter 2005 LP. If their latest, If Not Now, When?, is any indication, winter can’t get here quickly enough. The Beatings come out swinging, with Rodriguez snarling, “When the money runs out and the sun comes out, that’s when the guns come out” over driving guitar riffs and machine-gun drumrolls on “Feel Good Ending.” “Pretty Faces” and “All Dead Heroes” are similarly righteous, while the title track, a longtime live staple, is a terrific fuck-you anthem. There’s nothing contrived or gimmicky about this band or their music; it’s honest, unpretentious and all-too rare. — Paul McMorrow, Boston’s Weekly Dig