Labels: Adagio830
Review by: Danny Parsons
I’m not quite sure what happened to Comadre in between ‘Burn Your Bones’ and ‘A Wolf Ticket’. There was the split with Trainwreck which marked a slight change in their style – this album however, seems way off what I was expecting. The vocals have changed, there’s horribly poppy sections, there’s guitar solos (*shudder*), and distinctly different production. Despite all this, I can’t stop listening to it.
I’d say that the first half of the 12″ is the strongest. It seems to be broken up by some spoken-word interlude thingy which I find quite unecessary given the short length of this release. Thumbs down for that. So yeah, the first four tracks are the best in my opinion; quite raw and aggressive. The latter half of the 12″ is a lot more straight-forward and a bit too catchy/poppy for my liking. I especially like the first song which is mainly drums, vocals and feedback with the vocalist going on about “the space between your shirt and your chest”. Neat-o.
My way of thinking says that if you consider this release a stand-alone effort, independent of their previous releases, then it’s probably a winner. For me though, it lacks the zest of the old stuff and although I don’t dislike it at all, I simply find myself feeling slightly underwhelmed when I listen to it. What I’m trying to say is: it’s alright, so-so, not bad. On the plus-side, they’ve kind of ditched the stupid song names (except ‘Viva Hate’ maybe). That said, the penultimate song has the lyric “division, communism”.
Yuck.