2 out of 5

Label: No Sides

Producer: Various, Walter Weasel (re-mastering, according to Wiki)

Trumans Water exists just beyond the range of no-wave that I tend to enjoy.  It has elements I dig, and pushed in various directions it becomes Pavement or The Fall or the billion other band comparisons with which TW gets stuck, but as it has existed – always existed, lumbering on even into the modern era in one way or another – the band just doesn’t do it for me, and I take secret joy in that they’re one of those indie of-the-moment groups that everyone bought an album and now you can find one, almost always assuredly, in the used bins at any given indie shop.  (I am only secretly admitting this to you because it’s really dickish.  Please know that at one point, I was the dude buying all those used albums.  Which makes it hypocritical AND dickish..?)

So ‘The Singles’ is what it sounds like, a collection of EPs and singles that haven’t been included elsewhere.  For other groups you’d see the range of years and think that you could track some evolution of sound over that time, but besides Glen Galaxy flitting in and out of the band, that’s not really the case with Trumans – their M.O. from the start has always been to be this kind of living, breathing automatic rock creature, half-slop, half-practice, half-song, half-improv, so ‘evolving’ that style would be to defeat it.  The breed of rock TW pursues leans toward the noise end of the spectrum, but they continually float back in to slop-rock to prevent you from resting on any labeling laurels.  Some moments ARE pretty awesome – ‘Sad Sailor Story’ has a wickedly awesome speed-riff, ‘Floorjacker’ is almost a traditional indie rock track, and the appropriately titled ‘Do The Spazz’ is an ideal balance of improv and funk and screaming – but for any given glimmer its generally waylaid by some seemingly purposeful move away from structure.  So ‘Sad’ ends up repeating to annoyance, ‘Floorjacker’ wanders, and ‘Spazz’ doesn’t add up to anything other than fooling around.

I bet it was a kick live, and the absolute assault of the music is what broke the mold at the time, so it’s not that the attention was ill-deserved, just…  Well.  This stuff has to exist, I’m just not always sure who’s supposed to listen to it.  I’m down with improv psych; I’m down with several Walter helmed / produced projects; I’m down with abrasive noise.  But I can’t get down with Trumans because it doesn’t seem to be about anything.  And like the writers and artists who pursue the same and have their share of followers, I find myself without the desire to delve into it.  Furthermore, I’m not sure if such genres need perpetuation beyond one ideal example.  How many variations on an un-changing theme can be made?  So if you can bottle some of the songs on this collection, that’s enough, I’d think.  Or if I can break my ears away from looking at the snippets as songs and see it as just a smash-up of noisy moments, perhaps it becomes better.  (But I can’t because I don’t think that’s what was intended and thus my ongoing inability to get into the band…)

Regardless, there are peoples to whose sound sensibilities this all works, and they own a 7″ with their favorite TW riff, which sounds good in isolation but sounds better when shuffled between further spazz.  This is a good collection for those people.  Have I underlined enough that I ain’t in that group?

…And I’m also trying to support that there are better examples of this genre.  Tell me it’s supported so I can move on.