2 out of 5

Label: Circus Clone Records

Producer: Robbie Adams

What a well made, uninteresting record.  So Vic Thrill is apparently is apparently Bill Campion of the Bogmen, a band I never listened to, who renamed himself after a Williamsburg ‘think tank’ (FUCKING BLEEEECCCCHHHH) from which probably bands farted out into existence.  Then records released as Vic Thrill, along with some dude from ‘Garden Variety,’ another band I never listened to.

Fine, I’m sure it’s all quality.

And CE-5 is sonically very interesting, even satisfying on a certain level.  I had it on repeat several, several times trying to get a feel for it, and frankly never got tired of listening to the record.  But I also never was able to come to a conclusive feeling on the material, which tends to suggest that its entirely ineffectual.  There are a couple of notable tracks that successfully build on a formula that bubbles up through the laters of noise – ‘Afrological,’ ‘Nobody’s Watching the Radar’ – on these tracks, and scattered over CE-5, are moments where the poppy fooling around will suddenly congeal into a song, or chorus, that sticks.  Never mind that the lyrics are generally on the side of meaningless, at least for some seconds you get a groove where you can picture yourself singing along if the track flitted across the radio.  …Which is sort of the feeling I kept getting – 90s radio.  The Allmusic review mentions a David Bowie Ziggy Stardust thing, and sure, I guess, in that it’s ‘spacey’ and Campion occasionally slips into a soaring croon thing, but by the same token it’s just as Bowie as any of the fuzzy pop on Merge Records, or the more folky stuff WARM put out (when WARM still existed…?) – both labels where I could’ve seen this record popping up.  Going back to the radio thing, though, the 90s was one of those odd eras where you had ‘hits’ that had some artistic merit – they weren’t strictly pay-for-play, auto-tuned, next-big-thing; they were still steps above indie, nabbing a major label deal off of single hype, but there was a bit more experimenting going on for public consumption, it seemed, than during some other eras.  And you had these glut of groups who would turn out well-composed music that was nonetheless… empty feeling.  90s radio.  Where you’d sing along, know the name of the band, but not own the album.  (Feel free to compare that to the MP3 generation and say it’s primarily the same thing.  I won’t argue.)  I give Campion a lot of credit for showing definite vocal flexibility on CE-5 – from a rougher rock edged talking meter (like Pitchblende) to that more feminine sing-songy, to a sort of rolling singing style that honestly made me think of Thinking Fellers.  And I say the lyrics are fluff, but just as much as anywhere else, I suppose, it’s just that they rarely feel delivered with any real passion.  It’s not lazy, I just don’t connect with it, except in those brief shiny flashes mentioned above.

And the song writing – so, so impressively busy and slickly produced, great beats and interesting riffs on every track; well-balanced noises and non-disruptive turn-tabling suddenly popping up to punctuate tail ends of some songs – but still, it just feels… I dunno.  Like something that comes out of a Billyburg think tank and not an inspired piece of art.  And I swear that that opinion was formed before reading the background.

Not, by any means, a bad record.  Just not, by any means, memorable.