Thursday, June 14, 2007


Wipers - Youth of America

Hello, again. Last night I wrote a review of this album. I referenced the review in a review that I wrote of Life Without Buildings's Any Other City this very evening.

Well, turns out that my post of that review was actually an edit of this Wipers review! Fuck! So I deleted my awesome Youth of America review. Let's sum that shit up, then. For your enjoyment:

1) Youth of America is awesome.

2) The title track is ten minutes long or some crap! It starts out with this awesome double tracked guitar line, and then it just goes, goes, goes on this one chord while Greg Sage just melts your fucking face off with great gobs of guitar noise.

3) The drumming on here is really neat. It reminds me a lot of Anton Fier's drumwork on the Feelies' Crazy Rhythms. Really driving and propulsive, but not played with a whole lot of force, which significantly increases the amount of tension in the beat.

4) The "guitar solo" in "When It's Over" rules so hard. It's just the most brutal screeching noises ever, and they fucking cut your balls off, they're so good. Dick whippingly good.

5) This is pissed off, angry music, but it ain't your ordinary 1981 punk rock. Don't think "Oi! Oi!" skinheads or The Decline of Western Civilization. Think of the bands from that time that were really doing something different. Flipper, Big Black, the Minutemen, whatever the fuck. As much as a dig a lot of straight ahead punk rock, that's the kind of shit that gets me going.

6) Not everything on here is an epic guitar JAM in the style of Phish or the String Cheese Incident. The shorter, poppier things on here rule! Especially "Taking Too Long." It's in 6/4 time! Interesting pop music tricks! Hey!

7) The debut Is This Real? was one hell of a solid punk rock album, but man, this is where Greg Sage realized his unique vision of completely fucking awesome electric guitar transcendence.

8) His guitar playing style is fucking cool, too. A lot more subtle than that of an obvious Sage follower like J. Mascis, whose guitarwork is known for its presence of a much more blatant sort of "guitar soloing." You know, like, "HEY, I'M GONNA SHRED YOUR FACE OFF WITH BALLS OUT NOTES GALORE RIGHT NOW, ENJOY." Sage just whips his fiery cock out and shoves it into your eye sockets until you shit yourself because this album is so fucking good.

Rating: Sorry if you missed the original piece and don't like to read record reviews in list format! This is just what it all came down to. Anyways, to reward you for your efforts...

Song: ...here's the whole fuckin' thing! Enjoy!



1 comment:

Undercooked Sausage said...

Oh yeah, I was going to write a review for this about a week ago, only to find you already fucking did one, dill hole. but yeah, easily in my top ten albums of the eighties, the guitar noise just melts your face, the route they took on this album and the evolution from Is This Real? is just, well, not completely out of left field. But like a big hairy man running out of nowhere. Great stuff.