MUSIC BLOG

Album Review: MakeMe, House of Brakes

• Author: Katherine Hoffert
• Published: Tuesday, January 12, 2010

MakeMe’s latest album, House of Brakes, deals in the futile art of trying to stop the unstoppable. Musically, however, it’s all about tension and release. Full of bracing melodies, jarring guitars, lush textures, frenzied beats and a sweet/punky playfulness, House of Brakes is as energizing as a cold shower and as satisfying as a hot bath.

Set into motion with a brash, panning guitar, it chugs right into Riot Grrrl-charged opener "Valley Fever,” an alternately discordant/melodic song that sets up the album’s cliff-like dynamic shifts. The urgent and angular “Black Ants” follows, a hook-filled, post-punk anthem that perfectly illustrates MakeMe’s ability to sound at once chaotic and measured. Its start/stop intro and erratic rhythms burst into scorching ephemeral squalls, haunted by Claire Haynie’s hovering keys. You can almost smell the rubber burning as things screech to a halt and the line “It all comes down to our rational selves” exposes the main source of tension inhabiting the album.

Comparable in energy, the cacophonic yet melodically rich “Matters” charges ahead with tremendous momentum, propelled by Wes Chase’s rapid-fire drumming. The album’s centerpiece, it pits guitarist Jeremy Sullivan against bassist Zola Goodrich, their well-matched vocals singing the same disheartened lines without hearing the other: “I am everything you’ve wanted / When I disappear, don’t look so disappointed.”

Perhaps the most complex song on the album, “ru486” is also the longest, clocking in at 6:48 minutes. Sharing its name with the prescription for the morning-after pill, its split-screen nature feels like two songs soldered into one. But it works. Keys and guitar trade off melody, and the conflicted chorus of “I shoulda but I didn’t want to / I shoulda but I just wanted to...” sees the rational and irrational selves meeting again for the ultimate tug-of-war.

Resolution is finally found in the gauzy layers of epilogue-like closer, “Youth Without Youth.” Taking a more ruminative turn, MakeMe slow down enough to realize: “We could never stop, we must always go.”

And so they go.

www.makememakeyou.com

[Katherine Hoffert]