Faraquet A View From This Tower

[Dischord; 2000]

Styles: post-punk, math rock
Others: Don Caballero, Fugzai, Jawbox, The Rapture


The crowd at a live Faraquet show must be fun to watch, chock full of kids attempting to bob their heads to the oddball structures and math geeks trying to count out the complex time signatures. Faraquet has traded the rock structure handbook for calculators and multiplication tables and show off their algebra on View From this Tower. With the help of brilliant producer J.Robbins (Jawbox, Burning Airlines), Faraquet has crafted an in-your-face, bona fide post-punk treasure straight out of D.C. The group's main stroke of brilliance derives from their creative guitar output. The guitar tones are twangy and slightly overdriven, with just enough edge to complement the carefully constructed punkish tunes. The guitar riffs are shockingly original and jaw-droppingly brilliant, giving new faith to those that believe every guitar riff has been written already. Tempo changes, unique song structures, dissonant chords, keyboards, trumpets, thrashing vocals, auxiliary percussion, guitars, bass, cellos, drums, unearthly time signatures -- they're all here. And what's even crazier is the fact that they complement each other and play off one another with measured ease and a sense of maturity. Many of the songs are of moderate tempo and have the same "fuck-you-asshole-I'm-coming-through" attitude. Then the band goes off on all sorts of instrumental tangents that take you on a musical hell ride and back. View From This Tower is math rock at its finest. A stunning display of sophisticated songwriting and instrumentation pumping from the hearts of three human beings. It's smart, fun, and best of all, refreshing.

1. Cut Self Not
2. Carefully Planned
3. The Fourth Introduction
4. Song for Friends to Me
5. Conceptual
6. Separation of Self
7. Study Complacency
8. Sea Song
9. The View from This Tower
10. The Missing Piece