Contempt!

Toronto's Slim Twig is another unashamedly retro post-punk artist, and he says, with all the bluster of youth, that he's not interested in re-creating anything. Still, it's not hard to imagine him curled up in his adolescent bedroom with the collected works of Suicide, Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, the Godz, and other noise rock pioneers, with maybe a CD or two from Nick Cave's collected works. Twig has wrought his own changes on his influences, but it's impossible to listen to this droning avant-garde psychobilly-influenced album without feeling the presence of Alan Vega hovering in the atmosphere, nodding appreciatively. Like Suicide, Twig has found the perfect balance between dissonance and melody, and makes pop music that thumbs its nose at most pop conventions, although he does know how to write a killer hook. Much of the music here is created from samples of "found sounds," but unlike the noise bands of yore, Twig's production smooths out the harsher elements, although that doesn't mean the music isn't still slightly disturbing. "Young Hussies" opens things up with a skewed backbeat, a few cello samples, and a ranting vocal that's halfway between rap and psychobilly, a hallucinatory pastiche of sex and violence. "Patty Ann" is bedrock psychobilly, a hiccoughing vocal sung over a minimal eerie synthesizer line and scratchy percussion loop. "Alley Spying" is the sound of an apartment building doorbell buzzer played off against a rhythm track, bringing to mind a skinny talker huddled on the street against the cold relentlessly pushing the button of a victim who will never let him in. "Hidden" has a minimal organ line and vocals drowning in so much echo you can't understand a single word, but again the effect is unsettling. "Phantasm Inquest" sounds like it's built on a Casiotone samba rhythm; Twig's half-spoken narration concerns lost souls wandering between heaven and hell and maybe incest. "Japanese Machines" is a dreamy S&M scenario full of irritating noise and a quiet industrial rhythm track. The instrumental "Sabarites Etc." brings to mind John Cage playing piano in the engine room of a sinking ship. The most straightforward "rock" tune is "Estate Intrusion," which could portray a violent seduction or a rape, accompanied by a simple mixed-down piano figure and a clacking percussion track. The vibe here is self-consciously decadent and mysterious, a jumble of sinister images and a wall of discordant but melodic noise. As much a set of tone poems as a set of songs, Contempt! is nonetheless haunting and occupies its own unique niche. ~ j. poet, Rovi