Brain F≠ – So Dim (Grave Mistake Records)
There are some records that are great for their nuance, technical sophistication, or at least a strong association with whatever genre’s luminaries. And then there are the albums that are great because they aren’t really any of those things, the sort of record that sounds like the artist had ten minutes worth of songs and enough money for five minutes in the studio. Brain F≠’s newest EP falls squarely into the latter category. There’s not really any beating around the bush with it: this record is a goddamn mess. But it’s pretty spectacular at the same time.
Brain F≠ – So Dim (Grave Mistake Records)
There are some records that are great for their nuance, technical sophistication, or at least a strong association with whatever genre’s luminaries. And then there are the albums that are great because they aren’t really any of those things, the sort of record that sounds like the artist had ten minutes worth of songs and enough money for five minutes in the studio. Brain F≠’s newest EP falls squarely into the latter category. There’s not really any beating around the bush with it: this record is a goddamn mess. But it’s pretty spectacular at the same time.
It’s always nice to hear some permutation of garagey punk that doesn’t sound like it was made by dudes that used to be in youth crew bands who grew ironic mustaches and got jobs tending bar in Adams Morgan to support an ever-so-fashionable coke addiction. Brain F≠’s take on this sort of style is rawer, smarter, and less concerned with the image-driven approach of so many bands that take their cues from the genre’s bygone days. It seems like the band gets compared to old LA punk bands like the Avengers and the Bags in almost every review, which is not far from the mark, but doesn’t quite hit it either. The band bears more of a similarity to the spirit of those bands than the actual sound – how they all shared a sort of venomous melodicism without seeming like carbon copies of one another. Theirs is a propulsive sound – catchy without becoming too poppy, lo-fi without it seeming like some contrived stab at authenticity.
The band’s lyrics are thoroughly withering, but with a verbosity not generally associated with this style. The title track is carried by a sort of gallows humor, a skewering of those whose mental acuity and delusions of sophistication prevent a wider and more thorough appreciation of life. It seems like heady material for a song that barely cracks the two-minute mark, but couplets like “upper class and lacking soul / desperate need to feel control / avant-garde with virgin skin / so evolved, but still so dim” capture the message without a syllable wasted. The b-side, “Symptom Set,” is a little more on the grim side, examining addiction and its attendant toll on the body. But while they may seem somewhat incongruous, lyrics like “causes cancer, causes death / kidney failure, symptom set / emphysema, lung collapse, birth defects and heart attacks” are delivered with a rambunctious energy that keeps the subject matter from weighing the song down with gloom.
It’s difficult to verbally sum up the strengths of something that relies so heavily on its visceral appeal. So Dim is a collision of well-executed catchiness and chaotic noisiness – a delicate balance for an indelicate style – that imbues the songs with an energy and immediacy that many bands in this genre sorely lack.
