Look What
You Made Me Do
Self-Released
By Beverly Bryan
Can we
interest you in a big dumb hot flat slab of undifferentiated, unreconstructed
rock? The Pinx’s Look What You Made Me Do,
perhaps? It appears to be an album constructed from the sweaty, cheesy end of
'70s rock and the sweaty, cheesy end of '90s rock. Somehow, through
the increasingly complicated calculus of musical cycles this local juggernaut
comes out sounding fairly contemporary.
“Am I
Your Lover” is a perfect example, and bit of a jam by the way. The music is
Steely Dan seductive but the lyrics are Weezer insecure and confessional. Nice,
if you can take it. Other songs seem to combine the likes of Smashing Pumpkins
with, say, Black Sabbath. For the most
part, however, it’s all such a gloriously primordial slurry of atavistic wankery
that there is little point in trying to sort heads from tails. Especially when
a few truly driving tracks like “Crypto” emerge from the ooze and evolve to the
point of being almost memorable.
The
way this power trio can employ their considerable technical proficiency in rock
without any restraint or sign of reflection ultimately makes the album kind of
endearing. Sure, they’ll slow it down for a song like “Change Me,” but that’s
probably because they wore themselves out during the hasty full-bore of the
first two tracks on the album, “The Desert” and “Impatience.” Look
What You Made Me Do is essentially the musical equivalent of a first welding
project in auto shop class, with awkward joints spilling bulbous protrusions of
metal scar tissue everywhere — earnest, noble, hideous and perfectly serviceable.
Take it home.
