by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
On their debut full-length Tell Me I’m Bad, Editrix shifts through permutations of metal and punk faster than you can throw subgenre descriptors at them. For a solid thirty minutes, the lean and loud Massachusetts trio twists and turns through mathy riffs and pummeling breakdowns, phasing in and out of pocket grooves--they’re noisy, they’re poppy, they’re sludgy, they’re technical, and out to rock whatever type of socks you’ve got.
Music nerds may know singer and consummate guitar hero Wendy Eisenberg from their free improvisation, their past work with Boston noise rock quartet Birthing Hips, or their arty solo singing and songwriting (if you don’t, there’s no bad time to cue up Auto, a wide-ranging 2020 record with some affecting turns toward vocal jazz). “Brainy” is a word that comes up a lot in the conversation around Eisenberg’s music. It applies to Editrix too, and I mean that thoroughly; listening to Eisenberg jam it out with bassist Steve Cameron and drummer Josh Daniel will engage most every part of your brain, from left to right and from the deepest pleasure center up through the wrinkles.
Starting with the title track “Tell Me I’m Bad,” it’s proggy and angular. It’s also about as visceral as a power trio can be, and with little-to-no overdubs. The combined force of guitar and bass grabs you by the throat and the drumming drags you forward, buoyed by Eisenberg’s sing-songy vocals. You can get tangled in the busy transitions, but don’t get your dendrites in a twist--on tracks like “Torture,” the trio repeatedly pull away from each other only to slam back into place, and when everything aligns, it hits like the cerebral twitch of the first time you play a piano scale with two hands or see the side of a rubik’s cube shift into order.
You don’t get that kind of thoroughness without full engagement from three sides of a trio; the way they weave around each other in any number of outlandish patterns, but also in the ways they egg each other on to higher energetic highs. As the hardcore snarker “She Wants to Go and Party” opens on furious drumrolls and rigorous guitar riffing, you can practically hear Eisenberg’s mouth curl into a wicked grin around a half-growled lyric--”She wants to go...looking so...pretty.” Muttering backup vocals pile on the mocking, fueling Eisenberg on and on to a jump-up-and-down fever pitch.
Moments like that are pure punk affect, but there are the more exploratory too, with food for thought on generational conflict over climate change, U.S. use of torture during and since the invasion of Iraq, the limits of conscientious capitalist consumption--on “Instant,” rape culture. That track is easily the project’s tightest, and maybe the catchiest; Eisenberg’s guitar is clenched and squealing and the bass writhes in a vice grip of righteous, seething fury that’ll sear itself into your short-term memory.
Late in the set, some of the more parodic meta-rock ideas--”The History of Dance” and “Chillwave,” for example--don’t strike as vitaly as most of these songs do. Even so, they maintain a level of stickiness and accessibility you don’t often hear from a band with this kind of boundary-pushing ambition and thoughtfulness, not to mention the progressive chops to see it through.