Review: Pylon Chomp More
Monday, November 16th, 2009
The reissue of Pylon’s second album, Chomp, arrived like a thief in the night in October. Like the DFA-sanctioned reissue of its predecessor, Pylon’s debut full-length Gyrate, the sound qualities have been greatly improved and some strange odds and ends have been tacked on as well.
Dubbed Chomp More, the reissued album benefits a good deal from the remaster treatment it received for this first-time CD appearance. The brighter cadences and darker nuances of opening number “K,” along with “Yo-Yo,” “Italian Movie,” “Buzz” and the album’s undisputed classic “Crazy” unfurl with the bounce, hazy disco, punk and funk angles that defined alternative rock when Chomp was initially released in 1983.
It’s a natural instinct to blather on about the group’s Athenian cohorts R.E.M. and the B-52’s when trying to qualify what made Pylon such a revered part of Athens’ musical heritage. But Pylon wielded a darker sexual, emotional and cerebral edge. The only thing they had in common with those other bands was time and place. It’s more fitting to drop names like PiL, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Gang of Four and Wire if you’re attempting to peg the group’s post-punk and raw new wave aesthetics. But even those comparisons don’t quite add up either. “No Clocks” and “Reptile” are rigid songs by design, underscoring the group’s signature styles — mechanical rhythms, sparse and chattering guitar lines and Vanessa Briscoe-Hay’s growling mantras that all compliment each other with balanced precision. But there’s a looseness to it all that swells within these songs, and an element of simplicity that taps into the higher functions of musical cognition.
