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DELI MAGAZINE: Suckers Seek a Wild and Imaginative Musical Landscape… The experimental side of indie pop has gotten a nice little creative boost lately, thanks, in part, to the artistic contributions of bands such as Baltimore’s Animal Collective and Portland’s Menomena. Tack another “Made in New York” outfit on this short list of artists challenging the sonic limits of modern day indie pop. Comprised of Quinn Walker, Austin Fisher, Brian Aiken, and mystery man Pan, Suckers offer indefinable and stunningly unpredictable fare that ranges anywhere on the sonic scope between sedate guitar songs and crunchy, erratic drones. It is a new musical landscape that Suckers have set out to find; one that lies beyond the fringes of more traditional pop, psychedelia, noise, and folk music. Packing their knapsacks with a wild assortment of ambient guitar work, ritualistic percussion, wolf pack vocals, and a variety of other knick knacks (organs, keys, horns, etc), Suckers set up camp in a manic, yet wildly imaginative place where pop music is contrived of equal parts melody and dissonance; a place where musical limits do not account for much. - David Pitz Published on Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:00:54 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE: Suckers With The Silent Years. March 28, 9 p.m. at Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven. (203) 789-8281, cafenine.com. Though the members of the indefinable “experimental pop” band Suckers are all from Connecticut, it’s rare for them to leave Brooklyn and play in these parts. And you can’t really check them out other than at live shows. They don’t have any CDs. They didn’t even have a drummer until about a month ago—until they hired Brian Aiken (formerly of area electro/jam/art-rock group Eschellon), the duty of hitting a drum while playing another instrument was traded off among members Quinn Walker, Austin Fisher and Pan. But even if they had a CD, you couldn’t substitute it for the real deal. You can take Walker’s solo releases (one of which recently got him signed to CoCoRosie’s Voodoo-EROS label) as reference, since Suckers regularly play songs from them. The melodies are infernally memorable, but the adaptation to a live performance tends to eliminate electronic rhythms and other effects that play a big part in the recorded versions. Then there’s the band’s live energy and Walker’s intense jungle scream, which he doesn’t do on his solo discs. The rest of Suckers’ vocals tend to alternate between jubilant falsettos and low drunken moans reinforced by echo. The resulting sonic up-and-down is kind of like staring at a swinging pocket watch. A psychic beam enters your brain and forces you to enjoy the performance on a strangely personal level.? —Hugh Elton [email protected] |
