January 28, 2012
#6: Flechette - Flechette This 12 inch slab of vinyl, which includes six songs and a minute-long noise track, is the first release from Richmond, VA residents Flechette. Being part of a thriving underground scene here in Richmond, there are bands that end up seeming very important to my perception of the current musical landscape in any given year who might be meaningless to anyone outside the city. Two years ago, The Catalyst were that band; their album Swallow Your Teeth was in my top 3 for 2009. This year, it’s Flechette, whom I saw live at least half a dozen times this year, and whose self-titled LP racked up a considerable amount of playing time, both on my turntable and my laptop. Some of the repeated plays were due to its brief length—at 24 minutes, this record leaves me wanting more every time I play it. Flechette aren’t doing something completely new, by any means; for many of my friends, the primary reference for comparison when describing their sound is Fugazi. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, mainly because I was a voracious consumer of music that sounded like Flechette back in the mid-90s, and I think they more closely resemble some currently lesser-known bands from that era, such as Kerosene 454, the Trans Megetti, and Richmond’s own Four Hundred Years. Flechette’s sound mixes progressive, chaotic hardcore with driving alternative rock and the energy, if not the complexity, of the early math-rock bands. Album closer “Hypnic,” the only midtempo track on an album full of pedal-to-the-metal energy, has the chunky, rhythmic pounding of Drive Like Jehu’s best work. On the intro to “Rations,” the bass and drums work in lockstep, going in a completely different direction than the noisy arpeggios being cranked out the guitars (I will at least admit that this trick was invented by Fugazi). The album’s absolute best song, though, is “Ovidian Hurts,” a track that made it to multiple mixes that I blasted in my car’s tape deck (before the damn thing stopped working back in September). This barely-an-LP is concise enough that it shouldn’t have any weak points—and it doesn’t, really, but nonetheless, “Ovidian Hurts” stands out as a particularly excellent song. The first two verses establish a driving groove that gradually builds up to a climactic chorus, after which everything drops out for a second before the lead guitar brings in a much quieter bridge. The bridge builds slowly but eventually reaches a dramatic crescendo as vocalist/guitarist Jimmy Held screams “Do you not feel anything at all?” over and over. When the band eventually shifts at full power into a final chorus, it feels like you’ve just discovered a secret higher gear on a car that you thought was already at its top speed.  This brief album is all about moments like that—the harnessing of powerful energies to create cathartic moments that are all the more powerful due to their integration of subtlety and dynamics. Flechette are only getting started at this point; the six songs on this album are six of the seven songs they’d written at the time of recording. However, they’ve already started playing a couple of new songs during live sets, and it seems like their material is only going to get better from here. I look forward to hearing what they come up with next.

#6: Flechette - Flechette

This 12 inch slab of vinyl, which includes six songs and a minute-long noise track, is the first release from Richmond, VA residents Flechette. Being part of a thriving underground scene here in Richmond, there are bands that end up seeming very important to my perception of the current musical landscape in any given year who might be meaningless to anyone outside the city. Two years ago, The Catalyst were that band; their album Swallow Your Teeth was in my top 3 for 2009. This year, it’s Flechette, whom I saw live at least half a dozen times this year, and whose self-titled LP racked up a considerable amount of playing time, both on my turntable and my laptop.

Some of the repeated plays were due to its brief length—at 24 minutes, this record leaves me wanting more every time I play it. Flechette aren’t doing something completely new, by any means; for many of my friends, the primary reference for comparison when describing their sound is Fugazi. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate, mainly because I was a voracious consumer of music that sounded like Flechette back in the mid-90s, and I think they more closely resemble some currently lesser-known bands from that era, such as Kerosene 454, the Trans Megetti, and Richmond’s own Four Hundred Years.

Flechette’s sound mixes progressive, chaotic hardcore with driving alternative rock and the energy, if not the complexity, of the early math-rock bands. Album closer “Hypnic,” the only midtempo track on an album full of pedal-to-the-metal energy, has the chunky, rhythmic pounding of Drive Like Jehu’s best work. On the intro to “Rations,” the bass and drums work in lockstep, going in a completely different direction than the noisy arpeggios being cranked out the guitars (I will at least admit that this trick was invented by Fugazi).

The album’s absolute best song, though, is “Ovidian Hurts,” a track that made it to multiple mixes that I blasted in my car’s tape deck (before the damn thing stopped working back in September). This barely-an-LP is concise enough that it shouldn’t have any weak points—and it doesn’t, really, but nonetheless, “Ovidian Hurts” stands out as a particularly excellent song. The first two verses establish a driving groove that gradually builds up to a climactic chorus, after which everything drops out for a second before the lead guitar brings in a much quieter bridge. The bridge builds slowly but eventually reaches a dramatic crescendo as vocalist/guitarist Jimmy Held screams “Do you not feel anything at all?” over and over. When the band eventually shifts at full power into a final chorus, it feels like you’ve just discovered a secret higher gear on a car that you thought was already at its top speed. 

This brief album is all about moments like that—the harnessing of powerful energies to create cathartic moments that are all the more powerful due to their integration of subtlety and dynamics. Flechette are only getting started at this point; the six songs on this album are six of the seven songs they’d written at the time of recording. However, they’ve already started playing a couple of new songs during live sets, and it seems like their material is only going to get better from here. I look forward to hearing what they come up with next.

4:03pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z-FUayFWfgLX
(Notes: 3)
  
Filed under: Top 20 of 2011 
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