Capsule Reviews: The New Year, Dead Child

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The brothers Kadane raised a lot of indie-rock capital in the '90s with the slow-core powerhouse Bedhead, and the talents that drove them into the hearts and minds of thousands of dewy-eyed college kids show no signs of waning with the Kadanes’ post-Bedhead venture, The New Year. This self-titled album, their third release for Touch and Go Records, moves from elegiac piano pieces to raggedly distorted climaxes, and occasionally delves into the outer reaches of polyphony with mathy guitar figures (the band feature three guitarists) and clinically precise rhythms, aided and abetted by Steve Albini’s spare production. Lyrically, The New Year plumbs the highs and lows of post-bohemian youth segueing into middle age, careers, and marriage; the ambivalent song titles (“Folios,” “In Off Days”) hint at the less-than-sunny disposition of most of the tunes. But even the funereal “Body And Soul” (“There are two ways to go on / to forget, and not to go on”) can’t entirely suppress the joy implicit in the band’s songcraft.

The New Year.net

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Back in the early '90s, guitarist David Pajo helped level the indie landscape with the legendary band Slint. He’s also played with a slew of other legendary bands including Tortoise, Royal Trux, Stereolab, Will Oldham, as well as contributing to Billy Corgan’s infamous Zwan supergroup, and, for better or worse, he’s the main reason Dead Child has garnered attention from the indie blog world. Despite the creepy album art and death metal-style band logo, Dead Child is a classicist “heavy metal thunder” type project, conceived as an outlet for the members’ love of '70s metal bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. But the half-jokey song titles ("Never Bet The Devil Your Head") peg Pajo and Co. as a one-trick novelty act; a few tunes, such as the bludgeoning “Rattlesnake Chalice,” nearly match the aggression of their influences, but a surfeit of memorable riffs and curiously flat production put Dead Child perilously close to Tuesday-night bar band territory.

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