by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
If Richard Linklater’s seminal 1990 film Slacker - which flitted between the hopeful artists and youthful misfits that made up Austin, Texas - had been made two decades later, Chronophage would have been one of the groups of people the camera focused upon. The band are from that city and their music is a wonderful throwback to the hissing and enthralling college radio sounds of the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Th’Pig’Kiss’d Album is their second full-length, following 2018’s Prolog for Tomorrow, and the chaotic lo-fi spirit remains intact. It was released by the new Dutch label Soft Office, started by members of the excellent Rotterdam band Lewsberg (as well as Cleta Patra in the US). Chronophage share the same DIY and post-punk tendencies as their label bosses - the track “Name Story” features the same stark and curled vocals of The Fall’s Mark E. Smith - but overall they skew to lighter and fuzzier jangle.
Perhaps an important band of that era but from a different part of the U.S, Washington's Beat Happening, are a better touchstone: they share the same commitment to exploratory scruffy lo-fi pop, all keen energy and wide-eyed intensity; like Beat Happening too, they interchange well with their female and male lead vocalists (Cody Phifer and Sarah Beames) throughout, and also know how and when to find moments of weary melancholy. So they can go from the intimate and solemn “Heartstone” straight into the melodramatic and theatrical “Talking Android,” the latter spurting with a vintage and hefty organ.
Guitar stabs cut through tracks like “Any Junkyard Dreams” and the psych-tinged “Destiny Falls,” full of clanging twang and strident fuzz. Despite the rawness of the lo-fi recordings, the band’s vocals are remarkably notable. On the jiving and swinging “At Last I Am Run Dry,” Phifer’s voice leaps and yelps like a strutting cowboy, while on “Passageway” and “Siren Faraway” he sings lower and more bitter. Backed by a brittle battle drum beat, Beames is assured and commanding as she channels Kim Gordon on “Abzurdity”; amidst the stirring rhythm of “Animated Rose,” her voice evokes a sense of yearning and somberness.
Chronophage’s music may be ramshackle but it’s all carried out with skill and charm. Their potent blend of left-field jangle pop and post-punk deserves a wider appreciative audience, the slackers who miss the haziness and laziness of college summer days or the late-aged musos who want to be reminded that quality guitar music still exists. About that band name: Chronophage, derived from Ancient Greek words, translates as ‘time-eater’. Perhaps this is how the band view their music, as a way to pass the hours; there are definitely worse ways to kill time than create an excellent record like Th’Pig’Kiss’d Album.