Lye By Mistake
Arrangements for Fulminating Vective
Lambgoat
First Post: ^^^^^^ Gay
When news hit that lambgoat.com was kickstarting a label, I snickered derisively before coming to the should-have-been-obvious realization that none of the dingbats who post on the Lambgoat board would have anything to do with this venture. Really, Al Gore would have pulled a Bud Dwyer in the climax of his global warming movie if he’d learned that Lambgoat’s message board has become part of his Internet. However, when it comes to actual news, reviews, and that sort of shit, the dudes at Lambgoat have never been anything but supportive of this music. Why shouldn’t they expose bands they feel deserve it?
So, has Lye by Mistake earned the ridicule they’ll inevitably receive from board members at their own label? That depends on how you approach a record like Arrangements for Fulminating Vective. If you want cohesive songs with definite beginnings, middles and ends, something approximating verses and choruses, or even if you’re just looking for music that eschews structure for logical flow, Arrangements will make you angrier than watching your best friend’s individuality atrophy within the confines of a suffocating relationship. If dizzying musicianship and an utter disregard for common sense, genres and conventional songwriting are your thing, though, say hello to your new saviors.
This band obviously formed after hearing Dillinger and Mr. Bungle’s first album, as their songwriting process goes like so: Take the staccato “one-two-two-three-one-two” (or a variation of) Dillinger-type rhythm, add widdly layers of instrumentation and some monosyllabic stream-of-conscious screaming, then cut in with numerous musical non sequiturs, some that work and some that don’t. The St. Louis quartet can’t consistently throw anything to the wall and make it stick: the chaotic noisecore-country-fusion-Chinese plinking mélange on “Ostrich Feathers and Apple Pie” works, as does the Dillinger-Latin-lounge-jazz of “900 Seconds in Search of Jerry.” But combine bare-knuckle boxing beats and abrupt turns and twists like they do in “Silence, the Girl” and you get nowhere quicker than a car full of drunks crossing the desert without a map.
The lack of continuity sometimes makes this feel like some DJ’s inept mash-up of Calculating Infinity and Stu Hamm’s Radio Free Albemuth, but I can confidently say that this is a grower in the most extreme sense of the word. Y’see, just as I’m typing this, I’m hearing some neat guitar work in “Nero’s Intention.” Get back to me. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
