BLOOD BROTHERS Crimes ****
Firmly welding the rough, splintered texture of Kill Me Tomorrow with The Centimeters’ disturbing, spastic dementia gets Blood Brothers high marks for brilliance and change-the-world potential and low marks for bromide. BB’s naked honesty will strip you of defenses. “Love Rhymes With Hideous Car Wreck” volleys between male vocals of silky understatedness with female vocals of Yellow Wallpaper-ed claustrophobia while the music careens wildly between metal-like multi-movements—from carnival to post-no-wave to slippery disco to Liars art-rock, puncturing your pancreas with a thousand fish hooks. Be the bait. (V2)
BEEP BEEP Business Casual ****
Both “BB” bands this week sound strikingly similar; Blood Brothers are superior, but Beep Beep ain’t far behind. Concentrating less on the fascination of agony than making their music “musical,” Beep Beep burst out of the now-raging Omaha scene with post-everything slish-slash rock supported with sticky dance beats that serve to cover up the weak points: ho-hum chord changes and riffs that just do not pop. (FYI: Bright Eyes still suck!) (Saddle Creek)
FRANTIC BLEEP The Sense Apparatus ****
Frantic Bleep rip the sordid barrenness from your pathetic life and reveal ... sordid barrenness. In a world where admitting that nothing exists gives you all power, Frantic Bleep twist prog-metal into a new animal—heavy, rotted, glorious majesty mates with technical elegance and sophistication, evoking labelmates Madder Mortem (not surprising, given that lead vocalist Agnete donated vocals to Apparatus) and, in sheer epic scope and aim, Virgin Black and Subterranean Masquerade. (The End)
EISLEY Room Noises **
Comprising four siblings and a family friend, Eisley initially evade the crap-o-meter because they throw in just enough alt-country and fleshy layering over their pat pop to overshadow mediocrity. Stacey Dupree, 16, has a voice that teeters between Katy Rose and Avril Lavigne, and Dupree’s voice, ultimately, is where Eisley fails. Chalk up touring with Coldplay to Chris Martin’s misjudgment—Eisley are hardly the forecasted saviors of the music world. (Warner Bros.)
TOSHI Time to Share **
Spacey Sade-ish R& is boosted by a hot male (model?) singer, but all the smooth beats and SooperProduction in the world can’t make a compelling musical creation out of a Harlequin Romance. Time to Share’s music is well written in its way, but it will never be able to break out of its confines as just another awesome makeout album. “Neva Satisfied,” with its Motown singing and groovin’ blues beat, is the best track. (Epic)
