Album: Midnight of the Century : It’s been a long time since a post-punk band of this calibre has cast a clanging reverb over the room. Blacklist are from Brooklyn, New York — and they are James Minor on guitar, Glenn Maryansky on drums, Ryan Rayhill on bass and front man, vocalist and all
round thinking punk rocker, Josh Strawn. The band is on the Weird Records label founded by artist, DJ and apparently children’s book author (which he writes using invented language according to one report on the web), Pieter Schoolwerth.
Blacklist have been seen as an antithesis to some of the poncey, posey directions music and especially music in New York has come to take. They’re also a revival of what they used to call the ‘shoe-gaze’ band — one whose audio calisthenics (dense, complex sounds melding into seemingly indifferent vocals as the lead vocalist and often some band members, would literally stand still, perhaps looking down, at their shoes.)
A lot of their album, Midnight of the Century can be sampled on their myspace page. ‘Odessa’, the first track is out and out old fashioned energy. Flight of the Demoiselles is a great example of that complex sound that brings up all sorts of upheaval and distress. Reviewers have suggested that Shock in the Hotel Falcon is visceral to the point of being pornographic and there is something shockingly sexy about it.
Strawn believes that even politically charged lyrics and music must be at some level, open to all levels of interpretation. The title of the album has been inspired by anarchist Victor Serge while political and literary references are strewn across all tracks. I wouldn’t get into the references at first go — the music’s distractingly good for now.
Genesia Alves
