"The Dirt That Makes you Drown" - Spin

March 30, 2007

Another dose of dance punk mania from the Chicago quartet, their upcoming sophomore release The Dirt That Makes You Drown explores everything from dirty fingernails to chicks from outer space. The track "Prefab Nation" is an anthem against the artificial spawned from the homogenized surroundings of suburbia. As the keyboard whistles and the drums kick, Jack Flash and Gretta Fine take their turn on wail duty, reminding us that the only way to fight replication is to just "keep on rockin'."

"The Dirt That Makes you Drown" - Left of the Dial

March 29, 2007

Despite Chicago shopping itself as a green megalopolis for the post-consumer age, the truth is that it's a dirty low-down place of history and hunger. It has always tested the nerves, vision, and beliefs of bands that can get chewed up like fingernails in the heart and grid of Middle America, where each misunderstanding, good intention gone bad, or boring new stab at being “different” can turn into shrapnel. Yet, underdogs who have alligator skin and a zeal for invention can get shoved up for the world to see in hyper moments of survival. Perhaps that is why Bang Bang has hammered away in the stretches of time (four years and counting, gringo) that eat most bands alive. They know that mutation is survival in a time of wilted and starving rock cliches. With incoming keyboardist Rachel Shindelman helping mold their new template and Nick Kraska (both former members of the New Black) adding the dangerous animal skin pummeling, their latest onslaught “The Dirt That Makes You Drown “ was caught in the act at Steve Albini's studio by Greg Norman (who wired Built to Spill's sound) and is not a simple encore of their last LP but a liberating plunge into new waters.

Like mutant sex embers glowing in the hog butcher night, the Chicago night of railyard leftovers and bloated lofts overlooking miracle mile and gang city, Bang Bang has become a cauldron that squeezes both ragtag bars and anonymous strip clubs into a fountainhead of Sex Futurism Now, a territory unlocked by Greta and Jack, who grew up on comics leaking super-physicality, punk rock reeling in abandonment and speed whipped fury, and hot wads shooting from lank bodies in porno motion. Funkadelic told you to free your mind and your ass will follow, Adam Ant, with a face full of fake Indian paint, whimpered about the whip in the valise, X Ray Spex told you to go bondage up yours, and decontrol Devo told you to whip it, but Bang Bang cocoons all that into an enrapturing warehouse of sound that aims to make your aorta pound like an impeding heart attack, yet they wink the whole time in lightning-shaped ties, sparkle and winks, and fishnet stockings. That has not diminished since the French edition of Rolling Stone latched on to them or decreased one iota since years of touring have made their chops instinctual and taut.

Still fusing an inverted post-punk, glam damaged, shimmering fuzz rock schematic with a carbonized cake made from 1978 remapped (from feisty man/woman balancing act on a pogo stick classic X, buzzsaw blitzkrieg Avengers, unparalleled Blondie, and others), they are nonetheless tethered to no blistering boomboxes but their own. In Chicago, they are known as children of the grime night, sluiced with miles of sweat. However, their sonic architecture and inborn style are more akin to Brit suss than any of the shaggy, dressed-down, boy with beards post-emo that trumps itself as “fresh” across this faceless nation of white belts and Value Village rejects. Instead, Bang Bang makes us prisoners to their flashing hot pants and guilt-free tenure as our new wardens.

“What We Need” unburrows the entire new CD in an incandescent maelstrom. The song is a hang-ten soul-blues spasm, a firestorm in which Jack is amped-up on handfuls of trucker pills and big lights big city flash power done in wounded Chicago style, whereas was “She Came From Outer Space” is a mini-narrative about being a wee little girl inundated by nighttime B-Movies (yeah, the ones zooming from WGN back in heyday!), being tucked down in bed, and watching the world warp like an episode of Twilight Zone, all backed by a beat that sounds like a KORG being hammered into ricocheting funk punk service. It's slow, mystery-entwined, and throbbing at the same time. Meanwhile, “Dirty Fingernails” is equal parts soft billowing lounge meets slight lingering PJ Harvey mellowtron modulation.
“You get off easily,” Greta insists, before leading herself to wails and off-kilter wall-of-chaos sonic styling, like ancient Greek death drama, before the band slinks back into jazz'n'cigarette leanings. “Take your breath,” she continues, but at that point it's impossible after getting caught up in the whirlpool. “Surprise Surprise” has a blistering, curling, roiling backbeat, a slightly Fugazi-inflected guitar approach, and dual gender vocal prowess that adds smoldering tension and flare. The twin engine dynamic duo unleashes lines like “What's your name? What your number?” as they surge back and forth in scissoring semi-howls that raise all kinds of suspicion. Then there's the slower, damaged, and terrible beauty of “Loaded Questions,” in which Jack and Gretta dart between each other's words until they converge, “asking the questions” that no else will ask, wanting even to “shoot you inside my mind.” Even the piano can't mask the impending trouble on this one.

For every band worth their weight in 99 cent badges and sticky 45 RPM records, there must be a mythology, a scattered tale of half-truths and innuendo. So, here it is. Gretta Fine and Jack Flash spent their teenage wasteoid years in the dust-belt void of Albuquerque, dominated by tribes like Scared of Chaka, The Drags, and Flake (who were to become The Shins), but the two were lost souls, in different orbits, until one Chicago exile party pulled them into a ductile web of fucking, loathing, futurism, and non-stop plundering that became Bang Bang. Wait, or did Gretta roller skate down some Whicker Park angsty avenue in crotch-hugging panties, creating a dizzying curvature that Jack knew he could put a bass in her hands without losing the second skin Raveonettes beat? Anyway, Bang Bang was birthed, all wiry whiplash dance punk in a town known for post-rock gurus that no one heeds anymore. Gretta is like Ivy from the Cramps - pallid, sex-roiling, and unearthly, no gimmicks- Jack is the hormone
heaving, slinky Italian Mick Jagger-meets-Richard Hell captain of libido, while Nick is the flexing and debauched moist rythmic king beneath it all, in all the right places and more, baby, while Rachel has become the muse on many songs, sculpting the language and liquored lips of the band.

So, welcome to the new pleasure dome, where the Bang Bang exhibition never
stops.

"The Dirt That Makes you Drown" - Verbicide Feature

March 20, 2007

Bang! Bang! has created a fantastic album as explosive as their name