Almost 60 years on from the kaleidoscopic cultural explosion, tied to the back of free-loving, flower-powering, mind-warping hippies and the kicked-open-door of artistically experimenting possibilities, Hard Rock-New-Wave-Jazz-Punk ensemble Rated Eye demonstrate on debut Rated Eye (Wax Donut Records) that people are definitely still strange.
Picture, if you will, a neighbourhood garden party. The sun is shining, the turnout is great – both familiar faces and a few not. Everyone brought their own dish and the spread is just as intriguing as the mix of guests. There’s a carnival spirit. Your acid-fried neighbours from the apartment downstairs are hobnobbing with your usually uptight boss who’s letting her hair down with a light beer.
Just then, from the corner of your eye, you see a haphazard movement. You turn and now right in front of you is a disheveled-looking man, twigs and leaves poking out from his wild hair, unkempt beard, and torn shirt.
Did he fall through a hedge? Maybe he was sleeping there. For the rest of the party he seems glued to you. You just can’t shake him. But while his surrealistic ramblings are hard to make sense of (and he kind of smells funny), by the end of the night you have to admit, the party never would have been nearly as memorable without him.
You probably got the analogy about six sentences ago. Yes, the party is the music of Rated Eye and the rambling man is vocalist Albert Hall.
From the Slint-evoking guitar arpeggios of album opener “Burn Barrel”, through the Jesus Lizard-panic of “Miss Bliss” or the drunk-Robert Fripp-plays-“Thunderstruck”-goofing of “Economy Boro”, Rated Eye wear their collective musical influences with dadaist flair.
Perhaps if AC/DC were hanging out for hours in a dressing room listening to Oxbow, Ween and Captain Beefheart while huffing poppers, they might eventually stumble on stage and play music like this.
For sure, the band likes to get weird, but it’s all underpinned by a certain Hard Rock familiarity.
And they’re tight with it too. Whatever fractured, Alt-Rock lines guitarist Anthony Ambroso decides to lay out, the rhythm section keeps everything firing along without a stumble. The drumming is always powerful and inventive (without being flashy), while bassist Dan Tomko even gets a couple of moments to step to the front (such as the Shellac-like pulsing bass break of “Mia Demon II”).
Does the music need vocalist Hall channeling his inner Beefheart all over the top of it with his stream-of-consciousness patter? You could ask the very same of the music of Captain Beefheart or what Eugene S. Robinson brings to Oxbow. It would hardly be in the experimental spirit of the music to have a vocalist playing it straight.
In all fairness, Hall is not as dynamic a frontman as either of these titans of vocal peculiarity, but at the album’s best, the bizarre lyrical storytelling makes up for any shortcomings of delivery.
Opener “Burn Barrel” is a case in point, as Hall piece-by-piece teases the listener with one half-image to the next. “Behind the trailer… back in the woods” Ok, what’s there? “There is a hole…” Ok, what’s in the hole? “There is a whole lotta nothing” Ahhhh I see what you did there.
How appropriate for an album as warped as this, that the band would deliver their most memorable chorus (in the previously mentioned “Economy Boro”) on a track where the guitarist appears to be actively fighting against the rhythm section with Hall “singing” a repeated refrain about a deer running into the glass fronting of a bank.
Yes, these people are definitely strange. Here’s to more of that.
Buy the album here:
https://ratedeye.bandcamp.com/album/rated-eye
8 / 10
TOM OSMAN