by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
If you own a record player, you’ve probably had the experience of putting on an album, sitting back ready to enjoy, only to be disoriented by the sound of an LP playing at the wrong speed. It’s like drinking OJ when you’re expecting milk; the expectation of one makes experiencing the other feel exceptionally wrong.
Weaponizing expectations is a Cherubs watermark. The Austin noise rock band has made fucking with the format a symbol of authenticity ever since King Coffey signed them sight unseen to his Trance Syndicate imprint in 1992. Whether you’re reading their bizarre tale of growing up punk in Texas or listening to SLO BLO 4 FRNZ & SXY, Cherubs’ most recent release for Relapse, both experiences offer the same discombobulation of being pulled from a car wreck only to discover you’re physically unscathed.
Cherubs in 2021 are very real, as much as their music may seem like an acid flashback to the band’s short-lived initial run in the early 90s. You can pop on SLO BLO – or any of Cherubs’ albums post-2014 reincarnation – and feel like no time’s passed between now and 1994’s excellent and influential noise rock masterpiece Heroin Man. Cherubs sound every bit as youthful, vibrant, and harangued with scuzz. The music that influenced bands like Exhalants, Metz, and Tunic remains relevant and bewitching.
On SLO BLO 4 FRNZ & SXY, Cherubs add a couple of classics to their cannon, while beguiling with a few diversions. Opener “Die Robbin’” is of the former, a powerful and heavy banger that could just have easily opened Heroin Man, swapping out the busy-signal of “Stag Party” for the equally distinctive pulse of “Robbin’”. Vocalist/Guitarist Kevin Whitley – sounding perpetually fourteen – yelps over a slinky and sludgy push-pull riff, hammered in place by Brent Prager’s thundering toms and Owen McMahon’s thudding bass. Cherubs follow “Die Robbin’” with another new classic, “A Pair of Pear Tarts,” a tune which lurches like Frankenstein’s monster, grotesque and mesmerizing. Both songs typify Cherubs’ ability to maximize slight variations in time signature and chord progression to cathartic affect.
After the third song, “Lazy Snakes,” which feels a bit like variations on a theme, the album begins its descent into something other. “Sooey Pig (Sad)” is an alternate vision of a song by the same name that first appeared on 2019’s excellent Immaculada High. Over a woefully tuned acoustic guitar, Whitley’s voice teeters between mania and heartbreak, like some strung-out cowboy on a peyote binge, reminiscent of D. Sardy in the first thirty seconds of Barkmarket’s noise classic “Visible Cow.” It’s an enticing and effective trip, if a bit less exacting than its Immaculada High take. The next song, “Little Barely Pieces (pop-O-pies),” is a rough beast, a slouching, mid-tempo jam that juxtaposes the whimsical-on-bath-salts “Sooey Pig (Sad)” with a near comical level of menace. Whitley himself recognizes the stunt, punctuating his singing with what sounds like bursts of sardonic laughter. So you exploded – haha!
What SLO BLO lacks in terms of the accessibility that occasionally peek-a-boo’d through the fuzzy haze of their earlier work, Cherubs compensate for with the oddity of SLO BLO’s jarring second half, which takes the five songs of side A and slows them down, like the aforementioned 45rpm LP played at 33. On “Die Robbin’- Skrewd Version,” the angular riff transforms into a woozy, see-sawing affair, warbling as if Houston hip-hop’s proclivity to syrup had traveled northwest and infiltrated Austin noise rock. At this pitch, the “skrewd” version of “A Pair of Pear Tarts” is the most effective of the bunch. Whitley’s lyrics are a bit more decipherable at this slowed-down speed, his voice sounding like it’s running out of batteries. However, trying to get through the “skrewd” versions of “Sooey Pig (Sad)” and “Little Barely Pieces (pop-O-pies)” can feel a bit like wading through soup or noodling catfish in slowly drying cement: at some point you expect the songs to completely grind to a halt.
If there were a criticism of the album, it would be that other than the initial disorientation the “skrewd” versions provide, they remain inferior to their properly-pitched counterparts. Yet, to call SLO BLO’s second half a gimmick would be to misunderstand what Cherubs are about: upending expectation. Upon its release in ’95, a cursory exploration of the b-sides and rarities compilation Short of Popular revealed a band happy to stir a little ex-lax into the wedding punch of their formula just to see what happened. Today, SLO BLO 4 FRNZ & SXY continues the welcomed and enjoyable second act of this influential noise rock band, offering us new classics alongside old antics. Whether punching you in the face with their wall of noise or punching each other after shows, Cherubs are still fucking shit up.