2 out of 5

Label: Dischord

Producer: Ian MacKaye

So there are totally some dance-punk groups that I can get down with.  Q and Not U is not one of them, because they mostly annoy me.  Their empty lyrics annoy me, their sweaty-boy pitter pat annoys me, and the ‘energetic’ nature to their music feels counterfeit to me, even though I can’t do anything musically that these cats can.  If I’m being honest – and stereotyping – a lot of D.C. punk annoys me.  Chicago has that laid-back post-punk aesthetic that makes love to me, New York has the sneery punk that I sometimes can work with, but D.C. always feels like it’s out to prove something, and Ian MacKaye’s barcodeless label is a big part of that, and yes, I know I owe a lot of punk to him but I’m all making generalisms here, so bug off.

Q actually had good things going them in terms of bias, believe it or not.  The hype, at the time of Beep Beep, was the right kind of hype for my ears – all angular, noisy hype, compared to bands that got respectable nods from me in publications that I read and respected.  People would buy the album and I’d talk to them about it, and it kept making its why to my ‘to buy’ pile at Tower and then we get pushed out for something or other, and I would longingly hunt for it at used shops.  Normally with stuff like that I’ll eventually stumble across a promo or something to satiate the need, but it never seemed to happen with Q.  Years later – years later, much past any hype bias, at a friend’s house and something a bit more aggressive than expected came on her MP3 shuffleadoo and I peeked at what it was because it sounded like emo shit to me and that seemed a tad out of her regular listening queue… and lo, it was Q.  Which was really puzzling to me.  It just wasn’t what I expected.

Giving the album several spins, I just can’t reconcile the attention the band received, except that it was a ‘big deal’ that they were signed to Dischord at the time, ’cause I guess that label was rather insular and Q was a young band.  Everything they do – the spattery guitar interplay, the quick and jazzy drum style that lurches into punk thumps – I’ve heard other bands do better and with more oomph.  MacKaye’s production doesn’t help.  J.Robbins’ production normally mushes things to me, but it works when he gets noisy groups ’cause the mashiness of it allows for the sound to build into this weird wall of noise, even if the sound overall is flat.  MacKaye flattens things and strips it off warmth, like its recorded in a tin can inside a plastic bag.  I just don’t get it.

Now mostly, I can look past dislike to evaluate something on its own terms, but I’m going to go ahead and say that Q’s first album doesn’t even amount to much for me in within it’s lil’ genre of emo pansy pop.  However, there are some tracks on here where the group rocks it out, they drop the dance shtick and seem to write a legit punk song, and while the singing is still all pretty-boy and the lyrics still (in my opinion) do nothing except fill a particular need for someone to nasally sing atop the “yes, I’m in a band” playing style… those actual romp-worthy tracks are a-okay.  So I can’t be a complete dick and one star this, because there’s definitely talent rumbling amongst the players, even if I’m not down with the genre, and some of those in-and-out tracks – like ‘Little Sparkee’ – would’ve been what I wanted to hear on a comp or something.  So unimpressive, and rather, eh, annoyingly bland, but, sigh, enough to make me wonder where the band went from here…