Sterling, Poison Arrows, Che Arthur Three
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When you listen to the record, it’s not too hard to guess what might’ve influenced the band. Adam Reach’s straightforward, stomping drums often suggest old punk and hardcore–though they’re sometimes so compressed and distorted they sound like a drum machine, recalling big-and-beaty 90s electronica. Guitarist and front man Justin Sinkovich, formerly of Thumbnail and Atombombpocketknife, sings in a sour, sullen voice, his minimal approach to melody just a notch above spoken word, a la Big Black or Slint. His guitar playing likewise downplays melody–dissonant and spidery, it’s all about rhythm and mood, and seems to take after half the bands on the post-Sonic Youth D.C. hardcore scene. And bassist Patrick Morris, formerly of Don Caballero, plays heavy, intricate lines that make him sound like John Entwistle reincarnated as an angry prog rocker. But though the Poison Arrows borrow most of their sonic vocabulary from aggressive, confrontational genres, they run the other way with those familiar signifiers. Their atmospheric music is sometimes dreamy, sometimes creepy, and often both at once.
There are a few things they all agree on, though. They’re thirtysomething scene veterans who were playing in bands during the early-90s alt-rock boom, and they share a weakness for the underground giants of the time, especially the Jesus Lizard. They also enjoy out-there jazz, past and present, and follow Chicago’s thriving improv scene. The jazz influence manifests itself in the Poison Arrows’ music mostly through absences: they don’t use traditional verse-chorus rock structures, preferring to let parts mutate and drift into one another, and they don’t usually write endings, instead feeling their way through each song onstage. (The EP also contains improvised parts, but due to some heavy editing they don’t sound as spontaneous.)
This past fall they started working on their first full-length, recording the basic tracks at Electrical Audio. Everyone played at once this time, rather than laying down their parts in turn, and the band promises that the LP will have a more live sound, less oppressive and gloomy than the EP. Sinkovich’s obsessive Pro Tools tinkering on Straight Into the Drift–the songs were assembled like mosaics from tons of material–was in part responsible for its remarkable cohesion and consistent mood, but it’s also the main reason the record took so long to complete. He’s trying to limit the amount of time he spends working on any one project now, and to test his discipline he recently finished a remix for an art installation in Barcelona in one night.
