Let me catch my breathe. There is a song on this record, the best one in fact – “Steve, Dude, My Bud!” – that tires me out to listen to it. The Party of Helicopters, as befits any band with such an abstract monicker, do sort of emo, towards the hardcore end of the spectrum, but not too far. More post hardcore really, as it’s cleverly structured and chaotic. They tend to play a lot of intense, hectic songs that flit around and mess about, without getting arty or unrecognizable as music. Which is no mean feat, I’m sure you will agree.
One of the things that makes it stand out is the vocal approach. With a lot of this type of band you’ll get loud and screamy vocals, where as the Party go in for often unintelligible, pleading singing hidden behind the wall of guitars and drumming. Also, opening song “Fire Eaters of Tomorrow” has some awesome random crazy electronic effects. As if there wasn’t enough going on in the first place. But complexity rules, and I wish more bands that inhabit the punk (and all the related subgenres) scene weren’t so straightforward as they are these days. I mean, stuff like “Steve, Dude, My Bud!” – wow! It’s like a runaway train for the most part, makes me think of when the hijackers abandon the subway train in ‘The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3’ and set it running towards the end of the line with the passengers still on board. Kabooey! And another thing – all the songs have this cool effect (dunno if it was intended) where the first note of the song sounds like it is being ‘powered’ up from 0Mhz. Almost un-noticable, but I thought it was interesting. Heh.
I finally am able to figure out a pointer for style similarities – PoH (dipsy! la la! tinky winky!) are sort of like the Hal al Shedad. The label description suggests they are similar to Shudder To Think. But don’t ask me. What I can say though is that this is a cool album, it plays on 45, and comes on the flimsiest vinyl this side of a flexi disk. Check it out now, funk soul brother. Lots of scary black magick drawings in the artwork too.