Bygones, feat. sick instrumentation and one angry bear

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This is a joke about Lake Michigan - or as some Milwaukeeans fondly call it, "Ol' Toxicky"

Bygones – Click on That (Smash the Plastic Death)

Bygones – Fool Evolved

Bygones – Up the Shakes

(You can download all of Bygones’ debut album, by-, HERE HERE HERE, for a price of your own choosing.)

Bygones is a band composed of drummer/vocalist Zach Hill, from Hella, and vocalist/guitarist/bassist Nick Reinhart, from a band called Tera Melos. That last sentence doesn’t really matter, though. The only real preface for a band like Bygones is that, if we’re going to play the genre game (…and we are), Bygones are a math rock band.

I can hear the crickets chirping; I can hear the doors closing; I can hear you slamming your internet down onto the floor in pure unadulterated disgust and choking on your gross mustardy hotdog (in disgust). “Math rock!,” you exclaim. “MATH ROCK! Why wouldst mine internets deign to displease me so?! Wife, bring me my horn of discontent, for it I shall BLOW IT and BLOW THOROUGHLY! Alert the Pitchforkracy! Zounds! WIFE! WHEREFORE ART MY HORN! WIFE! Cease this chicanery and deliver unto me my horn, lest I rise from my wicker chair* of a thousand butt-hurts and whack thee thoroughly!”

Blow if you must (however, please do not abuse your spouse). But first, hear me out – although Bygones have one foot in the math rock camp at all times, their other foot roams the plains freely. You could compare this foot and its numerous musicological locations to Sonic Youth, experimental late-period Fugazi (in general, Bygones frequently evoke 90s Dischord albums – especially Smart Went Crazy, if that rings any bells…), various Mike Patton-related things, and Deerhoof*. Yes, that’s right: in as much as such a thing can actually exist in the world today, Bygones are a math-pop-rock band. (Like Battles? No, not really. Not like Battles.) Their arrangements stop and start, meander and jam, scream and twitch. But they do so with a confounding and totally awesome alt-pop foundation.

This hybridization renders Reinhart’s seemingly stream-of-consciousness guitar spasms and Hill’s “I-CAN-HIT-ALL-THE-DRUMS-FAST” style of play as refreshing departures from their simple, rhythmic, amphetamine-Malkmus vocals (and vice versa), making the jams much more palatable and the pop passages catchier and vaguely triumphant – and Hill and Reinhart are good enough musicians and sensible enough self-editors to successfully knot the two together without letting the end product become rote, too music-conservatory-drummer-child academic, inaccessible, or worst of all, bat-shit-fuck insane. Rather, the labyrinthine jams are the journey and the strangely anthemic choruses are the destination. The best of the bunch is “Click on That (Smash the Plastic Death),” the title of which couldn’t have been written better by Thurston Moore himself – I’d advise that you grin and bear the awesome spectacle of pitch-shifted dive-bombs and bombastic drum stutters in order to arrive at the strangely fulfilling coda of “I know you’re just trying to pay yourself back! I know you’re just trying to pay yourself back!” In conclusion: if you always felt that Sonic Youth’s drummer should have been an octopus; if you’re at all interested in modern rock music and don’t mind a little technical wankery; if you run everywhere for some reason because it’s just fucking faster; if you shower in hot coffee; if you…

* This is meant to be an insult – however, in reading this over, it’s come to my attention that this might be obscured or glossed over. Ladies and gentlemen, the real point of this post: STOP BUYING WICKER FURNITURE. Here’s some pictures of people who enjoy or are in the process of enjoying wicker furniture.