WEEGS - The Million Sound Of Black

How is it possible that a sun-drenched region like California occasionally spawns such degenerate offspring? Yes, because if in the early Eighties the bands orbiting the Ralph/Subterranean axis delivered a major reinterpretation of darkness in music, and if in the mid-Eighties the local trance scene gave birth to a hypnotic sound straddling dark-punk and psychedelia, today a new generation of deranged art-rock lunatics is out to remind us that California isn't just sun, beaches and girls in bikinis.

Some time ago on Onda Rock we flagged Vanishing, from San Francisco, who, between obsessive rhythms and a goth sensibility, revived the glories of batcave and positive punk. Today it's the turn of Weegs, four bizarre kids who had already positively impressed us with their 2004 debut "Meat The Weegs". And these guys are truly a(sub)normal. Unlikely costumes, freak attitude, and above all music that can turn as dark and aggressive as it is goofy and moody. Let's be clear, nothing new here, but the songs are so engaging that the lack of originality can easily be forgiven, given how brilliantly they excel at reworking their influences. Their off-kilter streak is, in fact, poppy and fun rather than subliminal — more Ween than Residents, in short — and it's disorienting to find it within sounds that reek of post-industrial apocalypse.

"The Million Sounds Of Black" boasts a layered, enveloping sound, drawing heavily on analog electronics, whereas the previous record, despite making ample use of keyboards, put razor-sharp guitars on full display, in the service of dissonant garage seizures.

Setting aside the nonetheless convincing "The Million Sounds", a kind of antediluvian ambient piece that drags on for three quarters of an hour amid buzzes, whistles, spectral notes and distorted implosions, the remaining eight tracks shine through sheer essentiality. And we have to point out the gorgeous "Aphid", as if Snakefinger and Renaldo and The Loaf were offering themselves up as a synthetic backing band for a howling David Thomas, while being strangled by a hangman's noose.

But there's no nostalgia trip here, the Weegs know exactly what they're doing, even if we can't quite explain why, every so often, "phenomena" like this keep popping up out there. Government X-Files? Transgenic food? Alien experiments straight out of Carpenter's "Village Of The Damned"? Who knows…

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19/09/2006