My first encounter with this band of sonic adventurers, via their eponymous album a couple of years back, was one of the strangest and, once I got my mind aligned with their world, rewarding musical encounters I have been faced with in a long time. To begin with, it feels like the sort of music that will result in you ending up in therapy. Spend a bit more time in their world, and you will come to understand that, actually, the music is the therapy you have been looking for all this time. Especially in this world of dance routines and toothless rock, punk by numbers, and indie kids with complicated hair and no real clue. Somewhere along the line, what seems challenging, impenetrable, and off-kilter reveals itself to be brilliantly unique, ornate, and wholly original. What I’m saying is, bear with it; you’ll get there.
Turning Face! is another six searing songs from the band’s swirling creative morass of post-punk, hardcore, art-punk, and intense hard rock groove. Hold tight, I’m going in….
“Las Vegas Leg Lock” kicks things off, and yes, there will be a lot of references to old-school wrestling, but then you must have got that from the band’s name. Rock and roll played with the ferocity of punk and the fuzzed-out intensity of garage rock; this song lays the template for what is to follow, an array of hard-edged, abrasive songs that burn through the musical landscape like the alien acid that melts through the Nostromo.
But it isn’t a case of noise for the sake of it; the title track does a neat line in spacious, staccato grooves, sort of blues dragged straight from the depths of hell, the section paved with the twisted remains of the highway, multi-car pileups, and burning rubber, iron filings and battery acid.
“Hardway to Shitsville” aligns them with bands like The Wildhearts at their most intense, that same blend of rock raucousness and an almost pop accessibility (in the loosest possible sense of the idea) whilst “A Face Made For Radio (Hog Jowls)” is southern rock built out of all the bits that Black Flag left on the cutting room floor when writing Damaged, a neat blend of great groove and gratuitous noise.
You get to a point when you realize that, no matter how convoluted and carefully chosen my descriptions are, words have limits, and so it is here. If this review has teased you a bit, the best thing to do is just listen to the album. And if what I have written doesn’t spark your interest, go give it a spin anyway, the band at least deserves that much.
The more you listen to Tojo Yamamoto, the more you become indoctrinated into their sonic cult…and I mean that in a good way, no make that a great way, the greatest of ways, even.
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