To continue this blog’s occasional celebrations of alternative rock bands from the 1990s – who remembers Failure? The thing about Nirvana – the inevitable touchstone for American groups with fuzzy riffs and bad hair – is that their appeal – with some exceptions – was in the spontaneous vitality of their music. The familiarity that twenty years of veneration has burdened it with, then, has made it kinda boring. For the jaded punk who’s still not quite prepared to grow up, then, something more challenging – more sonically ambitious – is required. The grim but diverse and expansive riffage of Albini alumni Failure provides the comfort (and disquiet) they’ve been searching for. The detailed sonic textures of their music serve to build a technical range that tests the cerebrum and emotional range that appeals to the heart. The tight rhythms and lyrical edge, meanwhile, ensure that unlike airy prog rockers of decades past they don’t neglect the gut.
January 27, 2012 at 9:05 pm
[...] shores. Let’s continue our tour through the maligned backwaters of alternative rock with one of its exemplars: the rowdy and righteous punk three-piece Jawbreaker. In the twilight of [...]