Quantcast
 Scott Creney

Eat Skull – III (Woodsist)

Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size Text Size Print This Page

eat-skull-III

By Scott Creney

Apparently some of these guys were involved with The Hospitals’ Hairdryer Peace record. Man, I love that record. This one’s good too, but man — go track that one down.

‘Space Academy’ is a near-majestic stomp. It verges on the triumphant—an anthem of modest proportions. It builds and builds, layer upon layer until it explodes.

At first I cringe at the Third Eye Blind bit, the that’s how it’s gonna be, but then this compressed overdriven noise solo kicks in and I say, ah fuck it. I may not a be a sucker for damaged genius art girls teetering on the edge of madness, but I still fall for lo-fi guitar skronk like every single time.

The line “watching dead horses decompose” isn’t nearly as profound as the singer thinks it is, but I like the way he adds “with taxidermy eyes” afterwards, all rushed like he just thought of it.

I like this next one too, but then I’m also a sucker for thinned-out drum machine percussion and keyboard lines that sound like old classroom films from my youth.

There’s a lot of good stuff going on here — ‘Stupid Moon’ has this great textured background fuzz that I can only hear on headphones, like someone recorded bacon sizzling and then slowed it down. In fact the whole album is vastly improved on headphones. ‘Twin Sikk Moons’ in particular takes on all kinds of extra dimensions.

It ends with an elegy, a slow dance for the wasted, their fellow travelers in the weary pedestrian void.

Eat Skull isn’t reinventing shit, and III isn’t even close to being a great album. But it’s got assloads of charm and is enjoyable enough in a laidback way. They aren’t looking to be loved so let it be what it is — learn to accept Eat Skull and maybe you’ll learn to accept yourself. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.