Yesterday came today, and boy, did it smell like thrice-reheated post-post-punk lasagna. Seriously, do Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, the Faint, etc., provide much of anything other than a healthy appreciation for your old Lene Lovich and Nash the Slash LPs? And then we have the exception proving the, er, well … technically, in postpunk there were no rules, and Lost Sounds, who hail from the distinctively non-post-punky climes of Memphis, clearly aim to ignore as many rules as possible.
On the one hand you get a synth-stomp anthem like “And You Dance?” which would be retardo-goth silly if you could just stop twitching your hips to it. Then there are “We’re Just Living” and “Mechanical Feelings,” both of which improbably — but winningly — marry stiff-necked Suicide/Devo textures to frenetic, fuzztone-laden garage thrash. And in the wonderfully titled “Clones Don’t Love,” as vocalist Alicja Trout utters paranoid gibberish about clones who “keep giving me dirty looks,” guitarist Jay Reatard (ex-Reatards, natch) unleashes a glammy zip-gun boogie worthy of the late Mick Ronson.
What was so great about post-punk in the first place was how its stylistic melting pot helped counter punk’s orthodoxy. So, if categorize we must, Lost Sounds are the true heirs of post-punk, helping to bring you the sounds of yesterday and tomorrow — today.
Appears Monday, Feb. 28, at the Painted Lady (2930 Jacob, Hamtramck; 313-874-2991).
Fred Mills writes about music for Metro Times. Send comments to [email protected].
