4 out of 5

Label: Rise Records

Produced by: Jerry Harrison

My impression of Le Butcherettes as crunchy, post-Yeah Yeah Yeahs rock revivalists was as surface level as any of my snap judgements, but after going back through their catalogue, wasn’t necessarily far from the mark, either. However, as led by the volcanically expressive Teri Gender Bender, the group always felt like it had a clear direction – not the case for many in that late 00s and beyond rock scene – and the backing from Mars Volta’s Omar Rodríguez-López (as well as recruitment / guest spots from tons of notable noisemakers) gave legitimacy to Butcherettes’ sound explorations as more than just window-dressing to their punky tunes.

I hadn’t really gotten hooked on the band, but they’d gotten past my first wall of judgements. With the release of Bi/MENTAL, my holy judgements came crashing down again.

Switching labels from the reliably quirky Ipecac to arena rock-pleasing Rise Records, and swapping Talking Heads guy Jerry Harrison over Rodríguez-López for production, my hackles were raised. While lead track spider / WAVES rocked deeply, it also has a cringe monologue from Jello Biafra; a dynamic that can sort of be found in the music throughout, which begins to flirt more openly with pop, and synths – that is, there’s kind of a line between what a song may be emotionally / melodically trying to accomplish, and how it’s accomplished. Bender’s lyrical focus is intact, swirling around her experiences being raised by an emotionally absent / abusive mother, but when that gets channeled through sing-song tunes, it inevitably changes my impression. This was feeling akin to the Dennis Herring produced Good News For People Who Love Bad News – an album I enjoyed, but changed my impressions of Modest Mouse, previously a favorite band, thereafter.

But the album ebbs and flows through hard rock; rock that Harrison’s layered production style arguably made even harder than before, with Bender somewhat fully unleashed by the wider sonic range to go fully theatric. Le Butcherettes of before were a band; bi/MENTAL feels more like a performance – one that the creator has been preparing for for years. The plus to that is that once you’ve switched over to appreciating the difference, all of that effort does pay off: the directly heavy moments are well seeded throughout the album, and help guide one’s ear to the sneaky noise still smeared all over the songs, pop ones included. On the minus side, a “performance” implies exactly that: bi/MENTAL can be a bit showy and distant; it kind of makes sense that Bender started recording under her name – and not as Le Butcherettes – after this release, perhaps having pushed the band as a concept to its limit.

Bi/MENTAL is an accomplishment. That “line” between effect and affect is maybe even represented by the album title’s naming convention (all songs have words separated by a slash and lower / upper case), and it does deliver on both sides of that line – shallowly defined as heavy rock and emotive ballads. On my discography revisit, I’d discover that much of this was always in the Le Butcherettes DNA, but I don’t think Teri really figured out how to (or was at a place to) blow up those elements to their more performative extremes, as they are on this release. That carries a degree of separation with it, the glitz and glam of being on a stage, but also brings the potential for greater (and wider) impact, masterfully managed by Bender, her group, Harrison and the other folks turning knobs and hitting record.