Blood Brothers
Screams in rock ‘n’ roll used to emphasize something; now they rain down indiscriminately. (The Rapture emphasize nothing more than how little emphasis their words deserve.) But at least the Blood Brothers have a sense of what constant shouting is good for: the Seattle band’s knotty, shape-shifting punk sounds like “Bohemian Rhapsody” rendered by torture victims, which makes for some entertaining Muppets-meet-Murphy’s Law art rock live. Unfortunately the Brothers epitomize a questionable trend–“screamo”–even as they make it seem more promising than it is.
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For a long time screams were rarer in rock ‘n’ roll than you might expect, reserved for punctuation or expressive flourish. The great exceptions screamed like they sang: James Brown to show you how there he was, Jerry Lee Lewis to show you how gone, Little Richard to show you how pretty. And they all inspired the Sonics’ Gerry Roslie–as good a place as any to start talking about punk–who sounded like the geek who wanted to be all those screamers, to get that ’64 Beatles response, to teach the world to curdle in perfect harmony. Thing is, the Sonics had a girl or something they were angry about–when Roslie sang “Now I wish I was dead” he sounded like he wished he was dead. The Blood Brothers sound like they wish they were alive. Imagine the most chilling howls from Yoko Ono, Busta Rhymes, Y Pants, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Kat Bjelland, Prince, Roger Daltrey, and your little sister. Now picture Dan Rather reading the news that way, all the time. For the Blood Brothers, screams are just a way of emitting lyrics–without intonation, without emotion.
If I’m making the Blood Brothers sound good, well, sometimes they are. The screams on “Fucking’s Greatest Hits” update T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong (Get It On)” with enough references to blood and chlorine to make its come-on feel nicely backhanded. “Every Breath Is a Bomb,” which absorbs ska, leaves no doubt that the drummer plays like he breathes. Burn, Piano Island, Burn is invigorating at first, but it feels more than anything else like a novelty record, as likely to clear a party as Atari Teenage Riot and as unlikely to inspire screamy sex or genuine rage.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Pete Starman.
