Monday, July 9, 2012

Now I'm looking for bands named "Blurt" and "Philadelphia Weekly"

There's a slight cognitive dissonance involved in reviewing a band that has the same name as one of the places you write for -- although as Dusted Editor Otis Hart pointed out, the Wire has Wire, and they're both doing okay. But in this case, the album was pretty good, so we're probably not going to sue for the right to be the real Dusted...(though we are, we totally are). Anyway, here's the review:

Dusted
Total Dust
Hand of Dracula

Dusted’s haunted, fuzz-encrusted songs fall about as far as possible from Brian Borcherdt’s other project, Holy Fuck. Where Holy Fuck cranks intricate, interlocking grooves, Dusted nearly eliminates rhythm altogether. Where Holy Fuck is collaborative, communal, celebratory, Dusted has the hollowed out aura of deep introspection. Borcherdt is not alone in this project — the main difference between Total Dust and a previous solo EP called Coyotes is that he is working with producer Leon Taheny — but he sounds like a guy working things out on his own. His songs have a blistered, wasted beauty, like Neil Young but maybe even more like Scout Niblett, as fragile melodies are subsumed in a detuned roar of guitar.

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We had Sean home for the weekend, which was really nice (though probably boring for him). He's away most of the summer at the St. Paul's Advanced Studies Program, doing Shakespeare, specifically the Tempest and Titus Andronicus. He got the role of Titus in the second play and now has roughly 600 lines to memorize in the next couple of weeks. But it was great to see him...he seems to be taking absolutely full advantage of the program, learning to play squash, practicing "Hallelujah" (the Leonard Cohen via Jeff Buckley song) for the talent show and hanging out with what appear to be some very impressive kids. So, yay for Sean, off into the world and doing just fine.

4 comments:

Jean-Luc Garbo said...

Wow, getting Titus sounds exciting. A unique play, certainly. Doing early and late Shakespeare sounds like a great experience. Hand of Dracula is a great name for a label, incidentally.

jenniferpkelly said...

Yes, Sean continues his conquest of oddball Shakespeare plays. He's also been in Cymbeline and Comedy of Errors (and the much better known Midsummer Nights Dream, Merchant of Venice and As You Like It). Not bad for a 17-year-old...he really wants to do Caesar and, er, the Scottish play.

Seems like teeth of Dracula are really the main point, but whatever...

jenniferpkelly said...

I told him there was a punk band named Titus Andronicus, and he kind of rolled his eyes at me.

Jean-Luc Garbo said...

Ha ha, that's a great reaction.