Catheters' Static Delusions
A punk-loving friend of mine complained recently about the rise of "style bands" that play shitty music but get good bookings because they look fashionable and have well-placed friends working in their favor. He was particularly vitriolic about some band he'd just seen who draped themselves in scarves, grew handlebar mustaches and pasted on the black eyeshadow, posing pretentiously like the show was just a set for some magazine shoot. "Nothing dangerous is ever gonna come out of a band in black eyeshadow," he sulked, and Jesus, he is so right.
Danger can only come from an act that refuses to put style over substance. I love volatile frontmen, violent intensity and higher-power aggressions that are as unmanageable as a whiskey tantrum. That's how I fell in love with Seattle's the Catheters, a band that emits an addictive, raw style: no scarves, no makeup, just sleazy, sweaty, punk fucking rock.
From the moment the Catheters' new Static Delusions and Stone-Still Days hits the stereo, Brian Standeford is the band's hotheaded frontman, despising a world he can't get enough of. On "Bleary Haze" he sneers, "I've seen your ugliness in coarse grains/I can't look it in the face," stripping away midnight disillusions with sandblaster delicacy. "Nothing" starts out with a tomcattish "YEEEEEAHOWL," and describes either an amazing high or an amazing fuck, as Standeford screams, "Fall in love with golden tongues exercised in rotation/I want to crawl inside these vibrations slipping into my mind? When I feel like shit/Nothing cures like this/Nothing fits like this/Nothing feels this perfect." Whether he's screaming about burning cities ("3000 Ways") or burning loneliness ("Endless Avenues"), Standeford constantly sounds plagued by some painfully cynical cancer, forcing him to snarl with an Iggy Pop/Kurt Cobain-like assault that's unmatched by the current crop of young rock acts.
And the Catheters are a young act?the band is barely beyond high school and they've already got a deal with Sub Pop, a perfect fit for a group that wears its Northwest influences all over Static's sleeve. Just as Mudhoney took the Stooges' grimy punk charge and slung it through the Sabbath mud, the Catheters mix heavy guitar fuzz with jittery tempos and squalls of noisy feedback, still managing to keep the hooks sharp, never resting in a hazy guitar stupor for too long. The record is fast enough to fly but thick enough to slam you in the gut, a 747 jetliner of ferocious punk rock, expertly created by four dudes with only one other record to their name. Like their Seattle forefathers from a decade past, the Catheters make some dangerous, nasty noise, a sound that only wears black-shaded eyes when someone's fist slams the color there.