Defeater – Lost Ground [Review]
Charlie Parker used to hang out in Charlie’s Tavern, a musician’s bar in midtown New York. To the dismay of his acolytes, he liked to play country records on the jukebox. There was reluctance to question the taste of mighty Bird, but finally a brave jazzman asked him. “How can you stand that stuff?” Bird looked at him and said, “The stories, man. Listen to the stories!”
I have a tough time with lyrics. I generally don’t care what an artist has to say, and I’m frequently disappointed when I focus in on the words in a song I love, only to find that the lyrics are slapdash, cliche, or try way too hard. It’s like finding out what someone’s symbolic tattoo means (dignity, obviously). You can’t unlearn the lyrics; you can’t bring it back to gibberish. In my mind, a truly great song, or album, is one that can tell a good story, evoking not just time-lapse Adamsesque landscapes (I’m looking at you, post-rock) or ubiquitous-yet-overworn interpersonal issues. It’s not easy, nor should it be.
Defeater, a Boston hardcore band, have two releases that stand apart from their peers based on their willingness to take chances with storytelling. In an interview, their guitarist has said, “[w]ith no disrespect to any bands out there I would say that hardcore has enough songs about straight edge / unity / family / etc.” Acting on this impulse, their first LP, Travels, recounted the life of a broken-down man from unwanted birth to church-steeple suicide. It was like Luke the Drifter gone hardcore, and it’s still one of my favorite albums from 2008. With Lost Ground, Defeater spins-off the story of a bit player in Travels, the homeless vet from “Prophet in Plain Clothes,” to great effect.
The record opens with “The Red, White and Blues,” which finds the protagonist at a bar, downing whiskey on the night before deployment to war. As the story progresses, he fights on the front lines of some unknown war, as his resolve and compatriots are killed (“No hope/Just folded flags.”), and he himself is gravely wounded. Upon returning to the States, he becomes jobless and alcoholic, pining for a better life a train-ride away (“Singin’ New York Town”). But NYC eats him alive, and the record closes with the vet “Beggin’ in the Slums.” The album trails off with the familiar folk strum of “A Prophet in Plain Clothes,” dovetailing with Travels and completing the circle. And, mostly importantly, the vocals don’t come off as yelling-to-yell, nor are they so quick or obfuscated to completely cloud the words and meaning. In short, they fit the story.
And while the story ropes the listener in, the real standouts here are the instrumentation and the production.
This record is an air-drummer’s dream, perhaps designedly so: it’s the first thing that the listener hears upon hitting play. The drums sit high in the mix, the snare has a perfect FWAP!, the kick is like a heel to the chest, and the toms have an incredible, infrasonic boom. The drums on “The Red, White and Blues” are flat-out pummeling, and the verse on “The Bite and Sting” is tech enough to impress but tasteful enough to respect the listener’s ears. The hi-hat work on “Singin’ New York Town” is similarly amazing. It’s as if the record has taken the best of melodic hardcore and post-hardcore, eschewing the trappings of the maligned “bro” variety. And thankfully, the record never gives into the temptation to use today’s scene-standard Meshuggah rhythms (“da-dun, da-dun, da-dun-da-dun, dun, da-dun”).
But that’s why Defeater is so compelling, they don’t give into any scene-standards. It’s formula free, devoid of cliches. The guitars use big and complex chords to add constant tension and release–not chunky power chords or cheesy octaves. On the low-end, Lost Ground features the thickest and dirtiest bass you’ve ever heard, which simultaneously buttresses the guitars and colors the already-deadly drums. Finally, Defeater breaks free of the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus structure, keeping things interesting throughout.
Lost Ground is a perfect addendum to Travels, preserving its amazing storytelling while continuing to improve song-writing and structure. It is a must-listen.
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