Meet Me In St Louis - 'Variations In Swing' (Big Scary Monsters) Released 01/10/07

Abrasive, awkward, erratic: this is what it’s all about. It’s post-hardcore, is what it is. So it echoes At The Drive-In, mainly. In stature, breaks, hooks and loops. Why? Because Alex Newport of ATD-I production fame has got his hands on them. And because Meet Me In St Louis are good. They’re difficult too. And tiring, exhausting; ripping through time signatures and ideas like Cap’n Jazz never existed. The guitars are abrupt, icy, formulaic. The vocals sometimes scream, sometimes groan, usually sing, and within their own off-kilter tempo, naturally. It’s ‘intellicore’ I tell thee. It’s smart.

Song titles ‘All We Need Is A Little Energon And A Lot Of Luck’ and ‘The Torso Has Been Severed In Mid Thorax’ suggest thought processes beyond the norm, outside the box, rooted in the underground. Or pretentiousness. But **** it, everyone’s pretentious, even you. Yeah you. So let’s get specific…‘Come To New York, There Were Less Murders Last Year’ is a bass-driven monster. The guitars are all-over-the-****in’-place, the bass is jazz (ah the bass!) and the structure… What structure? It’s spazzy, like The Blood Brothers; the light moments are ominous, like System Of A Down, it’s a splat, like a can of point dropped onto hard concrete. It’s paranoid: ‘Everyone’s a suspect/So just admit it”; suspicious: “I’m wet behind the ears/but you all look guilty to me”; a lazy activist: “I’m in, with my shoes and socks off/Here, waiting for justice”. It’s one song, with dozens of ideas.

And there are ten of ‘em. Including the suprising, refreshing, just-as-affecting sketched up, freaked out acoustic ditty ‘I Beat Up The Bathroom, I’m Sorry’. The vocals are tinged with Frog Eyes’ Corey Mercer and rasp just the same. It’s a statement. It’s brave, uncharted territory. It’s flexibility, dexterity, embracing the unexpected. It’s imperious.

All of 'Variations On Swing 'is imperious. Majestic, ballsy, sophisticated. ‘Eins Zwei Drei Hasselhoff!’ explodes from the novelty title into a colossus of drum rolls, hi-hat clasps and twinkles, now you see the rhythm, now you don’t. Beat Happening couldn’t do it, put it that way. And it’s proper indie. It’s what indie meant when indie meant anything. Independent label, DIY ethic, toilet circuit touring: love, passion. And all that comes across from the first Tasmanian devil drum assault to the last tweaking of a knackered guitar string.