Saturday, May 3, 2008

Entertainment-Gender

Entertainment-Gender

The long-gestating debut album from Athens, GA, post-punk favorites Entertainment is finally available to the masses. What does this mean for you? One of the finest pieces of music to be released in the past five years, characterized by chilly moods, morose tempos, Pornography-drumming, and a lead singer with the sexual charisma of Marlene Dietrich wrapped up in Rozz Williams' self-loathing. "Romance In A Rain" kicks off the set, tangling synth and guitars up in Trey Ehart's tortured wail, immediately calling to mind an unholy mashup of The Birthday Party and Bark Psychosis' epic album Hex. The album's heartbeat takes a dire turn for the worse with follow up track "Swing Movements," which just may be the most harrowing three minutes and thirty nine seconds of your life, conjuring up images of desolate sex, dark alleys, and fever dreams, Ehart toning 'We shall be happy!' and never sounding for a second like he believes it to be true. Bleak stuff indeed, and things only get worse from here. "Patroness", one of the group's early singles, makes a re-appearance here, but it's been tweaked and mangled to fit the album's genetic makeup, losing some of it's snarl, but this version makes up for it in desperation, repeated vocals of "Horrible phantoms" near the end will send a chill up your spine if you're not prepared properly. "New Joys" is Genders' most accessible track, with a glassy-eyed bass run and Love Life guitar riff propelling it ever forward, finally crashing into "The Nervous Walk", a Virgin Prunes-esque walk through the city at night on psychedelics, streetlights snarling and passerbys clawing at the corners of your eyes, one of the most dynamic moments on an album full of them. Final track "Flesh!" is as simple minded and vicious as it's title, post-rock guitars and Ehart's strutting vocal break the air around you, aching merely to destroy you under it's power, to shove you down and have it's way with your beautiful corpse. And there it ends, leaving you breathless, emasculated, the drums jittering out a final "Five Years"-on-speed beat as you try to figure out what just happened.
Highly recommended.

www.myspace.com/entertainment

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