posted 07/14/2009 (Tue) @ 12:00 pm
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Rx Bandits - Mandala (2009)
Alternative Rock / Experimental
Breakfast Cat wants to know “I CAN HAZ MANDALA?”
- My Lonesome Only Friend
- It’s Only Another Parsec
- Hope Is A Butterfly, No Net Its Captor, She Beats Her Wings And Softly Sings Of Summer Scent And Childrens Laughter (Virus Of Silence)
- Hearts That Hanker For Mistake
- Mientras La Veo Sonar
- March Of The Caterpillar
- White Lies
- Bury It Down Low
- Breakfast Cat
- Bled To Be Free (The Operation)
- Bring Our Children Home Or Everything Is Nothing
Bad news, Rx Heads: the Bandits’ horns are gone, and no one even stole them out of the van. Finishing a move they began with 2003’s game-changing The Resignation, the Rx Bandits are now just another alt-rock squadron armed with axes and drumsticks. Boo, hiss! Well, and keys, too. But boo, hiss!… right?
Wait, all ye aging naysayers in checkered pants! What the Bandits give up in instrumental uniqueness, they retain in their flair for strong performance and songwriting. Little comfort for third wave ska punks, perhaps, but the facts remain. A continued penchant for live band ensemble performance during the album recording process ensures warm, authentic grit and chime which truly makes the tunes here shine. No gloss, no fakery, no adornment, just musicians putting their music to tape. Mandala waves a big, colorful flag for experimental rock with soul.
The record makes first contact with Matt Embree singing “in the middle of a moment, in the dark of a dream”—watery organ and tickles of electric piano reel the listener into “My Lonesome Only Friend”’s accelerating daze, then the band pummels us with steamrolls of guitar and dire vocalization.
“It’s Only Another Parsec” further solidifies the notion that it’s okay to nix the brass. The inventiveness coaxed out of a flotilla of guitars and keys here is certain singalong slamdance fodder for the consistently brilliant live Rx Bandits experience. A brief spurt of synthesizer kicks things off, then puts the guitars in the driver’s seat for a rollercoaster of stop-start, riff-based fun. Stick around for the beautifully utilized falsetto at 2:25 and a sail down the gentle sea of fluttering, butterfly wing guitars which comprise the song’s minute and a half outro/segue into “Hope Is A Butterfly….”
There are so many little moments that make this disc a joy—the guitar line that crawls out of the speakers at the beginning of “March of the Caterpillar,” the chaotic, blasting exuberance of “Bled to Be Free,” the weird noises and pitch perfect direction changes of “Breakfast Cat,” or the simply overwhelming power of the realization that this is the band live—that it’s hard to find fault with a group so clearly energized by the process of creating music. If Mandala has a problem, it’s in the learning curve. It’s decidedly more difficult to jump right in.
The Resignation had the strength of a solid, rollicking, LOUD opener with a message that mandates a sing-along (”Sell You Beautiful”). Mandala’s immediate predecessor, 2006’s And the Battle Begun, opened with an a capella widget with catchiness far exceeding that of a radio jingle. Mandala is more of an exercise in resurrecting the concept of the album.
That’s not a bad thing if you have a healthy attention span. Perhaps that is part of Mandala’s unspoken purpose: to get the fair weather listeners to crawl out of their woodwork. But it is still a criticism. While it’s an insult to relegate the Bandits to purely “on shuffle” territory, there are few single tracks here with unabashedly poppy bits, and that has certainly not been true of their back catalog to date, even as recently as 2006.
There’s still plenty of win on record here. The words hit on a much deeper level than the superficial, spoonfed afterthought of many a brigade of radio rockers. As for Embree’s vocals, they still age like wine; he pours out glasses of blue-eyed soul on every track. And it’s no small compliment that these musicians are scarily tight as performers. Their enduringly altruistic, peacenik lyrical mantra in mind, the Bandits have the potential to go down in history as a rockier, 21st century Grateful Dead. They sound perfectly comfortable on Mandala, and that’s a good thing. Let’s all join hands now, and pray they don’t get too comfortable just doing their thing, and keep the music flowing out, and the fans flowing in to shows.
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Tags: alternative, experimental, jam rock, mandala, rock, rx bandits
