Plexi - Dark-Glam Provocateurs

It's not easy to resurrect a cult band when the available information about them is scant at best and largely made up. The official Plexi biography has it that they met around strip clubs, deviant sects and Taoist spiritual retreats, but there's no way to verify any of it. Plexi never lacked a sense of humor, and they were second to none when it came to playfully and provocatively managing their image, letting it hover somewhere between mystery and deranged irony.

Plexi were born in 1993 as Godseed, the brainchild of LA film student Michael Angelos, who decided to pursue a career as a rock star after a brief taste of the avant-garde film world. He started out as a singer, only to end up on bass in the band, pushed into it by his friend and guitarist Michael Barragan, who was desperately looking for someone to play four strings in his new project. Drummer Norm Block completed the trio.

Flamboyant in look and fond of provocation, Plexi stood apart from the mass of indie bands aligned with the slacker aesthetic of the early 90s. Dressed in leather or latex, made up and tattooed from head to toe, they looked like characters out of a noir comic book or an Alex Proyas film. Their story is deliberately shrouded in mystery, and their fame took hold slowly, starting out in their own neighborhood, where they played alongside other underground bands, before moving on to LA's alternative clubs. It was the enthusiastic word of mouth from early curious onlookers that fueled their growing reputation.

Although tied to the grunge diaspora, their songwriting is — like that of other contemporary bands from the goth sphere such as Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails — a close relative of 80s post-punk, industrial and glam rock. David Bowie, New York Dolls and T Rex are declared influences, but one can speculate about how much they were also bewitched by the sound of bands like Cult, Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and Christian Death. Guitarist Michael Barragan, who started out as a metalhead, in fact relies on an arsenal of ambient effects to make up for his technical shortcomings. The trick pays off, taking the shape of an unprecedented wall of sound made of chaos and distortion. Barragan uses the tape-echo effect of an Echoplex unit on most of the songs, in a way that recalls the ghostly echoes that open Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead". The effect is used as an instrument in its own right, and thanks to feedback overdubs and combinations with other effects, it forms the backbone of Plexi's arrangements, alongside Angelo's rusty yet melodic bass playing. Angelo stands out for his gift for synthesis and his ability to channel the guitarist's chaotic sound into perfect pop choruses and sticky basslines worthy of New Order and Chameleons.

What makes Plexi children of their era is the blend of muscular guitar textures (fully at home in Nineties alternative-rock) with a sinuous, submissive style. Both elements underpin every one of their songs, echoing the formula of Jane's Addiction. This mix of muscle and sensuality permeates the band's entire image, which, just like Jane's, is both macho (the Navarro/Barragan-style solos) and ambiguous (the effeminate, shamanic figures of Perry/Angelo) — an even blend of testosterone and a taste for camp aesthetics and cross-dressing.

Before becoming (for a very short time) the next big thing of the California underground, Plexi released a self-titled EP for Boys Life and Bug Out Records, rough around the edges but already hinting at their future evolution. An ad placed in the music monthly Flipside made the band's sense of humor crystal clear: a photo of the album cover preceded by the announcement, "If you're only going to buy one record this year... make it Nick Drake's 'Five Leaves Left'".

The EP was recorded in 1994 but came out the following year. The distortion, somewhere between garage-rock and Sonic Youth/Nirvana, along with the listless, raspy vocals, makes it harder to spot the post-punk roots compared to their later work. A careful ear, however, will be able to trace the glam and goth-rock lineage. It's a minor record, recorded in a somewhat raw way, but the intent to break down genre barriers and produce an original, if rough-edged, sound is already clear.

Among the best moments are the stop'n'go dynamics of "Simple Man" (Iggy Pop locked up in a padded cell) and the voodoo-rock of "Second Sunday", somewhere in Alice Cooper territory but with a chorus firmly rooted in late-millennium alternative rock.

I.F.A. (IFA Records, 1995), a four-song EP, marks a further step forward in their quest for the perfect sound and a clear leap ahead in terms of songwriting. The trio alternates sinister, biting verses with raspy yet sticky choruses. The sound, while still raw, relies on ambient effects that hint at the elements the band would fully develop on their LP (two of these songs would end up on its tracklist, albeit in heavily revised versions).

The cover shows, from above, the legs of a woman wearing shoes with fuchsia pom-poms, revealing a horrible floor, presumably belonging to some disgusting club. In a way, it's essential to understanding the cheap, unabashedly trashy glam aesthetic the trio had chosen as the visual counterpart to their music.

In '95 Plexi signed to Sub Pop. The man who brought them to the legendary Seattle label was talent-scout Curtis W Pitts, a friend of Sunny Day Real Estate. The new label would allow the band to take a step up in terms of support and budget, but Plexi's Hollywood background, macabre sense of humor, and party-hearty, drug-friendly lifestyle would clash with Sub Pop's more serious culture, as the label's managers were used to dealing with an entirely different kind of band. Still, all three members have made clear the enormous support Pitt gave the band throughout their journey, describing him as an eccentric hippie and survivalist.

Their first release for Sub Pop would be the single Part Of Me/Caught Up. The A-side reveals a commercial potential hitherto unexpressed (99 seconds of melodic punk), while "Caught Up" follows in the vein of their earlier releases, with jittery verses and melodic openings in the chorus. The latter would end up on the compilation That Virtual Feeling – Sub Pop And Sega Get Together.

After a long gestation, Cheer Up, their only full-length, came out in October 1996, much to the trio's frustration since, in their own words, by the time the album saw the light of day it already sounded dated.

All the elements mentioned so far had yet to be realized in memorable songs; the sound was there, but the melodies weren't always. Cheer Up adds the missing pieces to their puzzle. First of all, the production, which, while retaining the roughness of their style, highlights Barragon's talent for building layers of sound. Michael Angelo's charisma does the rest: the eccentric frontman writes his most successful choruses and brands them with memorable lyrics.

Their manifesto "Forest Ranger" is the best example confirming what's been said above. The songwriting is superb, with pauses strategically placed before electric explosions and progressions that build tension before the delicious "limping" riff that closes the chorus. The overlapping whirls of echo, laser-beam-like oscillations, and lightning-fast tremolo effects resembling helicopter blades (Barragon would cite the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" as an inspiration in this regard) show the maturity the band had reached in terms of arrangement. The video, in line with the hazy sci-fi imagery and cyberpunk references typical of late-millennium cinema, provides the right visual counterpart to the song's sonic storm.

Lastly, lyrics that leave a mark. The singer, disillusioned and bored by an unstimulating existence, compares himself to icons of sport, art and politics: "Just like Che Guevara, I'm a forest ranger" (with Che Guevara replaced on each repetition by Carl Lewis, Phyllis Diller, Salman Rushdie, and so on). The taste for the absurd and the mixing of high and low culture suggest the lyrics shouldn't be taken too seriously. Some have tried to read the title as a pun: "forest ranger" sounds similar to "stranger", but the band has - obviously - never confirmed or denied anything. In all likelihood it's an ode to escaping normality, much like the album's other classic, "Dayglo", a celebration of the friendship (or love) between two teenagers dreaming of an alternative to the post-apocalyptic Los Angeles they live in – ⟦Q1⟧. With catchy little choruses, guitar/keyboard duets, and drums with such mangled tones that they sound like a sampled hip-hop rhythm track, it should have been a 90s alternative-rock anthem.

"Roller Rock Cam" is the song Plexi had been trying to write since their beginnings: an alt-rock anthem with sinuous verses (the guitar so drenched in effects it's almost intangible, the bass round and post-punk) and an explosive chorus. It's precisely the latter that makes the song memorable: rather than falling into trite post-grunge razor riffs, they come out with a T Rex-style boogie complete with tambourine and handclaps. The pairing of adolescence and engines makes the lyrics yet another generational anthem.

"Peel" had already appeared on the I.F.A. EP, but the version on Cheer Up is more dramatic and better arranged. Slow and lumbering, marked by a bass strummed like a guitar, "Peel" tells the story of a woman's depression and suicide. The structure isn't linear: the arrangement builds slowly until it erupts in the chorus, culminating in walls of power chords and a Dave Navarro-style solo. Michael Barragon's work here is commendable: the layers of ghostly sounds heard in the background are the guitarist screaming into the microphones of his instrument. But his contribution isn't limited to the arrangements and electric soundscapes: he also provides a dark-ambient interlude, sings the hardcore track "56", and writes the gothic ballad "Ordinary Things". Though less showy, drummer Norm Block's contribution is essential, according to the other two members, who credit him with the ability to perfectly structure the songs, managing their length and pauses. Among the collaborators worth mentioning is cellist Melora Creager, a former Nirvana session player and frontwoman of the band Rasputina, whose sound was built precisely around her cello. Her instrument's notes enrich the album's two ballads, "Ordinary Things" and "Star, Star".

"Change" is another standout, built on a chord progression with a crescendo arrangement that suddenly shifts from a delicate, echoing arpeggio to a massive electric wall of sound. In 2'20", "Fourget" achieves what dozens of Los Angeles bands of the era failed to express in a decade, stringing together an unbroken succession of explosive riffs and melodic choruses in odd time signatures. With this kind of material, any run-of-the-mill 90s alternative-metal band would have churned out a mess of clichés, while Plexi offer yet another demonstration of dynamism and theatricality. And what a difference between their rough yet atmospheric sound and the overproduced sheen that was engulfing hard rock at the end of the millennium.

"Mountains" is indeed symptomatic of what's been written above. Had it come out five or six years later (or earlier), it would have been an indie classic. With that New Order-style bass and solos drenched in ambient effects, it could have been an Adorable single in 1991 or a track by a band in the vein of Interpol in 2002. In 1996, it's a track that's nothing short of jarring compared to the style California was exporting at the time. Although many bands active in Los Angeles cited new wave as an influence and covered 80s hits (with the low point being the horrible version of "Blue Monday" recorded by Orgy a couple of years later), its presence was usually buried under a layer of macho grunge-metal light years away from Plexi's decadence.

The release of Cheer Up and the band's tireless live presence earned the group cult status. The trio won the respect of a number of musicians far removed from their aesthetic, such as Archers of Loaf, with whom they would tour, or East Coast noise outfit Six Fingers Satellite. In an era when bands with huge guitars and walls of amplifiers were selling millions of records, Plexi too would end up signing with a major label. It was only a matter of time before a major label took notice of such a photogenic trio, and in their case it would be Atlantic, who in 1997 reissued Cheer Up, forever changing the band's trajectory.

Used to a grueling routine of short tours alternated with songwriting, Plexi ended up being perpetually on tour. Another change that would be hard to swallow was the gradual softening of alternative music. If three eccentric, rowdy characters like them already had little in common with the bands on the roster of an indie-rock institution like Sub Pop, imagine the discomfort of opening for bands like Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth. In a lengthy interview on the Dig Me Out podcast series, Michael Angelos would compare his Atlantic contract to a credit card; an ideal situation for a twenty-something suddenly living on a few thousand dollars a month, but in his case exhaustion ultimately won out over creativity.

Plexi would never finish the second album they'd started recording in Amsterdam – probably an unwise choice for a band that openly used various kinds of drugs. Their adventure's end was confirmed in 1999 with a statement that cited, in characteristically mocking tones, "lack of interpersonal skills and emotional detachment" as the cause of the split.

Michael Barragan and Norm Block carried on in music, playing in various bands including Mark Lanegan's live band. Michael Angelos works as a music video producer.

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