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Don Caballero -- For Respect Touch & Go
Every pundit with a spit of chalk and a flat rock has argued the kinetics of this band, sentiments usually polarizing into double-dick frenzy vs. mother of all comas. To satisfy the great unwashed, I'll say right off that this ain't Nokturnel, and if you only listen to music with your hand down your pants, you should probably stick with jocks with bongs. On the other hand, while this is occasionally slow and always methodical, it has none of the vacant-inner-world depression/sarcasm of Monster Magnet or the Beastie Boys. Instead, For Respect is boring in the same way that Blind Idiot God, Gore, Live Skull, and Slovenly are boring, its circling instrumentals offering the pleasure of being consumed by the desert sun and giving zero incentive to break on through, fight the power or curse the Gods. It's a mistake to tag this as "rock," 'cause while there's some tension-and-release, the typical slave/rock mentality of the anger addict who tries to prove that he's neither an addict nor a slave by being angry is nowhere to be found. If anything, the music inhabits the pop end of the drone spectrum, maintaining a static tension that fends off ambition and masturbation. Nothing on For Respect suggests mumbly armchair inertia or writing your congressman, and its weirdness is less about dances with elves than the way , it feels to shake a six-fingered hand. The gist is a subtle dislocation that puts wayward metal weave before bombast, a flip that would have Pantera working at Burger King when they weren't washing Glenn Branca's car. I'd rather have you stare at the sun than actually buy this record, but I'm not always that practical. -J. Marlowe |