D. Rider
Mother of Curses
(Tizona)
D. Rider's Mother of Curses is at once artful, playful and sinister -- a cacking 1930s cartoon villain sentenced to hang because of what he did to the heroine just after he tied her to the train tracks. Amplifying this notion, the cover features a piece of embroidery that's either been ravaged or left unfinished: a smiling child in a summer hat, naked from the waist down, her middle absent. It's a little bit cute but mostly creepy -- disturbing, even, if you think about it too long. And so is the sharp, sexy, unhinged rock music on this Chicago project's debut.
Heading up the Rider is singer, guitarist and drummer Todd Albert Rittman, "Deathrider" on the album's sleeve. Rittman is the founding guitarist of U.S. Maple and Singer, two Drag City bands marked for their deconstructive approach to rock: atonal, arhythmic, dissonant, yet still structured just enough to where you knew what they were about. With those groups, rock is the language, but the syntax is drastically askew. D. Rider adds a mischievous little nephew to this family with Curses, an offspring less constricted by the determined obscurantism of Rittman's other kids and more free to relax, kick back, and crank out the skronk.
Fans of TV On the Radio's noisier stuff will appreciate the crackly feedback drones, spidery guitars and distorted jazz-horn arrangments that make up the key instrumental groovage on Curses. The first track, "Arranged Marriage to No Toms," is a statement of purpose: the drum set used on the album has only the kick drum, hi-hat, snare and crash. Halfway through the piece, a fat, tortured saxophone (played by Noah Tabakin) comes in and scraps with the grotesquely dissonant guitar and stalking fuzz bass.
Rittman uses percussive, beatbox-style vocalizing over a skittering drum pattern to sweet effect on "Body to Body (To Body)," producing a jerky, schizoid beat for the guitar to come in and shred all over. The album's lyrics are spat out, chanted, half-crooned in improvised melody, because the voice, too, is an instrument to be played with, not a device of direct communication. On this album, the words speak as loudly as the sound of an aerosol can rattling -- or any other auxiliary noisemaker in D. Rider's cabinet.
Much like a classic jazz combo, this band starts with a few basic elements, lays down a couple of parameters, and runs with it. Fortunately, the caliber, creativity, and -- most of all -- restraint of the musicians involved (including trumpeter and keyboardist Andrea Faught) is so high that D. almost never missteps. The result: Curses is a consistently lowdown, sexy ride.
D. Rider, "Touchy"
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Fun fact that Billy knows but others may not: The singer for Rittman's band Singer is Kansas Citian Rob A.A. Lowe, formerly of 90 Day Men.
We interviewed Mr. Lowe not long ago: http://www.pitch.com/2008-06-1...
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