Speaking of which, I was on there today because I am, as much as I deride the culture, definitely a colossal fucking hipster, and I was reading their Stereolab reviews, when I stumbled across one by my old nemesis, Brent DiCrescenzo. Thankfully, this utter fucking douche hasn't written any reviews for them since like '03, but they haven't hosed off the shitstink of his reviews from the site yet, so there's reason yet for me to hold a grudge! Anyway, I hate that tool with a passion. Motherfucker wrote this review and still had the gall to blast Joan of Arc for being pretentious (which they are, admittedly, but that doesn't mean he's not a hypocrite!) (also, just to clarify, I'm talking about the band, not the historical figure). Also, with regards to his Stereolab reviews, he gave Cobra & Phases a 3.4, which is inexcusable, and then wrote one of his bullshit "concept reviews" about it, which is more inexcusable, possibly on par with the Armenian genocide.
Anyway, sorry, that whole paragraph, links and everything, was a typo. What I meant to say is, imagine the Contortions without a sax player, or Arab on Radar with odd time signatures, or Cancer-era My Disco with Gang of Four's Andy Gill on guitar, and you're pretty close to getting an idea of what Ex Models sound like on Zoo Psychology, but that still doesn't paint the full picture. The vocals are pained, unintelligible castrato yelps, the dual guitars sound like they're strung with barbed wire, the bass is slippy-slidy goodtime free-funk, and the drums would be cavemanish if these songs weren't full of bizarre time changes and displaced accents. The songs are all very short (15 tracks, 20 minutes)- pop structure without the repetition, like Wire on Pink Flag- and at coke-addled tempos (which could refer to either the caffeinated soda or its nasally-ingested former ingredient) so everything sort of zooms by on first listen, but if you actively listen, you'll notice how well put together everything is. That's another thing- the band is ridiculously tight. Even a song like "Hott 4 Discourse", which has a rhythm reminiscent of shoes tumbling in a dryer, never falls apart.
Basically, this is a delightful adrenaline rush of shouty post-post-punk for the ADHD set. There's no real downside except for a couple of lo-fi filler tracks, but even those are pretty funny (one ends with a bandmember saying, "This is why we're not getting anything done!), and, again, everything goes by quickly. If you like the sort of music I've described in the above sentences, this is about as good as it gets. And if you're not, go fuck yourself.
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