Record review: Don Caballero Punkgasm
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
Ian Williams’s angular, stumble-step rhythm was an obsession at the very least.
For kids dazed in the backseat of a school bus coasting suburban back roads, nothing should be especially rude or discomforting. My headphones said differently however, Don Caballero told me separate. Williams was able to take bounds that had previously been unexplored, and completely chart the fuck out of them. Along with Damon Che’s impeccable talent behind the drumset and Pat Morris’s lanky basslines, 1998’s What Burns Never Returns was a cacophony of melting cadence and control. It substantiated the loosely-structured and un-orchestral in contemporary instrumental music. This was all of course before Williams quit the band. Impulsive and obtuse was the name of the game, in part because of Ian Williams’s foray in to what he now specializes in with the experimental supergroup Battles. What he left behind, however, would be nowhere near as inventive as the Don was in its prime.
