Scramble
Suicide Squeeze Records
By Samantha
A. Parvin
The
full-length album Scramble with great enthusiasm.
Their
style showcases several characteristics of African and early American roots
music (and ultimately blues, rhythm and blues, pop, hip-hop and rap genres),
such as call-and-response, syncopated rhythms, and the accented “one-beat,”
made popular by James Brown in the early 1960s. By contrast, the heart-heavy
tracks evoke such emotions as sorrow, frustration, excitement, love and
content. Lyrics like “Take Back / Why’d
you even say that? / I’ve just gotta tell you I’m gonna gonna break your f*ckin’
face!” definitely promote these young ladies’ emotions as inspirational to their
music.
But
for some, it may be a hard sell. One must listen carefully and get past the
girly hoops and hollers to actually make out the lyrics of the songs; and if
you’re listening carefully enough to distinguish each word, then you are
probably having difficult fist-pumping and head-bobbing, for which the band is
so famously known.
If
you enjoy this female scream-o style, then you’ll love everything that The
Coathangers have done; but if the top-of-your-lungs-at-a-pitch-only-dogs-can-hear
is not your forté, this group will not make your top 5. Luckily, there are a
few more melodic tracks to break up the – dare I say – monotony of the
scream-o, such as “Sonic You”; and though the radio announcement-type sound
effects are not exactly original, they do add character to the album.
All
in all, if this is the kind of scene you can get into, you’ll love The
Coathangers Scramble album. If your taste lives elsewhere, no worries;
there is plenty of music out there for all of us!
