Bodychoke – Cold River Songs

1998 • Purity

Post-punk and noise rock take a lot to impress me these days, since I'm not a huge fan of the genres, so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. Cold River Songs is a pretty typical post-punk album that while on the surface sounds alright, it has been pretty hard for me to get into it. I'm torn as to whether or not I actually like it; it has a lot going for it but I feel a bit jaded listening to it.

Superficially it sounds pretty nice. While the production can get a bit sloppy at times (e.g. instruments just out of sync), their inclusion of a bit of noise is great. The noise sounds a lot like Sutcliffe Jügend, which of course is two main members' other group, and since I've heard their material before it's nice to have that bit of familiarity in Bodychoke's sound. I also love the use of string instruments (violin and cello), and would have liked to hear more of them; cello is sadly underused in rock music even though it often fits really well. It's the only thing saving "Ideal Home", that's for sure.

My problem with this album is that deep down there isn't much that's sonically interesting going on. The songs are all pretty similar to each other, with a tom-based drum groove, simple bass lines, and guitar feedbacking that is neat for a little while but gets less interesting as the album goes on. It reminds me a lot of Swans and Neurosis, two bands I've already played to death over the years and already really enjoy, so these songs feel a bit stale to me. It doesn't help that the songwriting is very repetitive and even after several listens it's difficult to tell most of the songs apart.

So in the end I'm pretty ambivalent about this album. It's definitely not bad, and it has a few great moments, but I can't help but see it as another noisy post-punk album to add to the heap. For fans of this sort of music, yes, I'd recommend it, but I'm satisfied enough with what I already have to be honest. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair, but such is life.

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