Eternals, Watchers, Low Down Brass Band
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At Locks and Montana’s apartment, after a browse through a new batch of reggae vinyl, I sit down with the band for a powerful serving of soba noodles with veggies and dumplings. The Eternals’ third full-length, Heavy International, is coming out on Aesthetics in just a few days, but the talk turns, as it often does among people with a profound level of emotional investment in music, to the downfall of the underground scene–something Locks and Montana haven’t felt connected to since the mid-90s. “God, how many more people are going to come out with a disco-punk beat?” Montana asks. “When they go to band practice are they like, ‘I want to express something,’ and this is what they express? Something they’ve heard in 25 other bands?” Locks sees a change in attitudes that’s just as pernicious. “We’re in an era where poseurism is accepted,” he says. “So bands that are just starting seem to adopt whatever kind of horrible affect that used to only be attributed to rock stars. The underground is just filled with people who have the expectation of being rock stars.”
TV on the Radio, with their similarly genre-agnostic sound, make postmillennial tension seem kinda romantic. Heavy International, on the other hand, conveys in even its most uplifting moments the knowledge that shit’s really fucked up right now. On “Too Many People (Do the Wrong Thing)” Mulvenna and Montana work up a pleasantly bumping beat, but Locks asks, in an ominously overdriven voice, “If you take away the future / Where will children run?” Locks calls the Eternals “difficult,” but he doesn’t mean “hard to listen to.” The music’s actually shockingly addictive, considering how unpoplike its component parts are. The challenge he’s talking about is to our complacency, both in our roles as music consumers–buying the same disco beat 25 different times–and in our lives outside our headphones.
The Eternals celebrate the release of Heavy International next Friday at the Empty Bottle.
