4 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Todd Rittmann (mastered by)

Cheer-Accident – the band I keep forgetting is my favorite band. …Because, frequently, I really dislike what I’m listening to, with hinky vocals set against shticky music, and, like, there’s a Cheap Trick cover. …But then I’m also hearing stuff I love, with some brutally inventive sound explorations – atonal, I-don’t-know-how-you-make-these-sounds noise – and brittle Chicago post-rock that slots in more perfectly with the Now Wave Skin Graft scene. And so I keep listening, on a loop, until hours have passed and I realize I’ve been convinced of adoration for the entirety of the album.

Of course, not every C-A listen has this effect, but they also have approximately one billion releases, so that would be a tall order.

The title tune on Here Comes the Sunset represents the dichotomy above: buried within its five minutes are a couple minutes of incredible, cloying sincerity about love and sunsets – strummed and sung with heart. Before that is a patient, creepy crawl of ambient noise; after that we get, like, a kazoo that mimics that sincerity. The buildup crawl is admittedly pretty subtle, so you’re likely to tune in more for the sincere part, which could slot in on some singer-songwriter album: no thanks. Taken as a whole, though, the song is just weird, and either more sincere or maybe more silly, or more… Cheer-Accidenty, I guess, where you can’t really get a read on this stuff, which is exactly why labels like Skin Graft work for them.

I do think the latter half of Sunset falls off a bit, with the aforementioned subtlety and followup Les Vandales de Paris a kind of J.G. Thirlwell-lite cinematic jig, but closer Then Again turns on the fuzz for a more progressive / aggressive rock out that’s like a slightly tighter latter-day Thinking Fellers.

The first half of the album is all magic: Star Vehicle (4 Flats) is a killer opener, a completely chaotic dirge that opens up in its final moments to provide a platform for Thymme Jones’ possessed vocal-line; Maison de Velours Ecureuil slips in as Thrill Jockey-style electro funk; and so, logically, we do our Cheap Trick cover next, which is obnoxiously traditional… until the group blows up the midsection with an utter noise / glitch freakout.

Sigh. Go for it, C-A. I love y’all.