Cave

You all know I like those droning, thumping, working-one-chord-for-20-minutes instrumental bands, right? So, I like Cave, but...decided that they're not Neu! by a good stretch.

Here's the best paragraph from my review of Neverendless, out now on Drag City.

There’s more than a shadow of Neu! hanging over opening salvo “WUJ” in the steady percolation of rhythm, the clipped, diffident lyricism of guitars, the abstract way that melody is subsumed by machine-like forward motion. Drummer Rex McMurry’s cadence has the same dry, snare-accented intensity that Dinger enforced on “Fur Immer,” though guitarist Cooper Crain is less a melodic counterpoint, more a source of additional rhythmic tension, than Rother was. Additional instruments, a pulsing organ motif (keyboardist Rotten Milk), a bumping undertone of bass (Dan Browning), accentuate the track’s restlessness. A blare of guitar sound breaks the tension, briefly, but there is no real space for rest or contemplation. Neu! was able, sometimes, to implant a stillness into the center of its most frantic rants. Cave is either in motion or at rest, but never both at once.


The rest of the review


Adam Roberts

My Neu! interview is up!

I’m really kind of psyched about it…have a look.



In other news, poor Ari Up, RIP…remember when I interviewed her last year and we talked about period cramps and UTIs?



Also, on a personal note, kind of a bummer, Sean (my son) dislocated his shoulder playing football on Monday and will probably not be able to play again, ever, for risk of re-injury. He’s also going to miss some of the lead-up to X-C ski season, which is even more of a downer, because he’s quite good at that, but success is all about conditioning. He’s real sad, refuses to play Madden NFL on Xbox even, poor guy.