I kept examining the five-tape batch, bursting at the seams like a bulbous blob of butter in a small soapbox. FTAM Records? Hmmm. Then I saw Peter J. Woods’ unnecessarily middle-initialed name (do you know another Peter Woods?) and KNEW I was at home with mammy and pappy, just waiting for the fahr-werks ta start. Hyuk-hyuk! A Bleaker Teen Lip is Blake Edwards (Vertonen), Neil Gravander (Lucky Bone), and Woods, together at last, teamed up like a devastating post-noize supergroup and teeming with activity. Strangely, I don’t feel the groove of Downgraded Saved Arrows hit me until Side B; A is over so quickly and never sinks its nails into my back enough for me to remember it the next day. The flip though? It’s a hulking, skulking, growling slab of sonic upheavals, truly a worthy sum of ABTL’s storied parts (you’ve read my Vertonen reviews, right? study up, Cerbs nerdz!) that keeps giving long after it could reasonably have pitched its tent and pissed on its campfire. Woods’ last LP was so restrained (but great; but great) that I didn’t expect such a gail of wind from this tape. Then again, as I mentioned, that material on Side A is restrained as all GET-out. Hey, that’s why they have Side Bs; wipe the slate clean, try again. I’m reminded of the FRKWY series most of all, by dint of the way the trio bounce ideas off each other, weaving a tapestry as they go that eventually canvasses the entire room in their violent colors. And don’t kid yourself; Downgraded Saved Arrows is violent and brimming with violet-colored rage that causes the eyes to bulge and the forehead vein to, in some people, bulge like a huge… Well that’s another matter. A Bleaker Teen Lip, such a strange name for a band, and yet why not? When the aural rewards pile this high, a name tends to become more than it seemed upon first blush. (Ask Swans.) Hope to hear more, hope to hear more…
More about: A Bleaker Teen Lip
