Warpaint - The Fool

Warpaint
The Fool
[Rough Trade,2010]

Sto se mene tice, debi album godine...

Avoiding the Spectrorisms of their fellow females, the LA four-piece instead go for dense, dark dreamscapes.
It's equal parts our good fortune and Warpaint's bad luck that divine writ saw their six-year career flourish amid this fashion-fickle scene, into witch they've been co-opted on account of - being pretty ladies with an adress book full of glittering names: a fucking boring fact that's dragged up at every opportunity.
Warpaint don't deserve that. In the nicest possible way - in that no-one should give a toss - they're hardly a fashionable bunch. The four of them look as though they were dragged away from sniggering at Beavis & Butt-Head in teh early 90's, all bushy-browed and slouchy. That would be pretty much irrelevant if it weren't for the fact that that's where their sound stems from too. The dulled, monotone guitar that bruises the opening of "Set Your Arms Down" sounds like a sun-blinded moment from post rock pioneers Slint, while Emily Kokal's fragile, confrontational vocals hark back to Cat Power's.
Whereas the aforementioned nostalgia harbingers use below-fi production for an injection of rawness, this rings true and thick as dark blood seeping from a wound, every splotch of live amp overdrive captured, a drone beneath that runs with the fast-slow trajectory of a night drive. The live heartbeat of their sound is so intimate that it feels as though we're peeking through cracks in the garage door, spying on them at work and longing to enter their hallowed coven. "Warpaint" wriggles within that same thickness, never forsaking their dark minor chord clang, but allowing the vocals to obscure themselves like an albatross diving beneath the waves.
When the production relents and the lyrics become audible, occasionally they're a bit hokey wolf-woman. Take the otherwise gorgeus, nerve-snappingly tense "Bees", where Kokal sings "the full moon taunts me". It's not an oft-trod cliche though, as proven by the engrossing paranoia of "Shadows". "The city I walk in, it feels like it swallows", she coos through a bent acoustic echo and piano that chinks like crushing teacups. The shimmering, vast production reverberates as if off blank skyscraper faces, emphasising the isolation of the city into witch her eventual enticing howl melts. "Composure" is equally smart, the four of them crowing into the dark with a mixture of Elektrelane's mystery and playground taunts. It's torrid structure mirrors the internal dilemma that they shout within "how can I keep my composure?".
Unlike the punchy "Exquisite Corpse" EP, "The Fool" doesen't deal strong melodies blows, but neither does it suffer for that. The dark purple rumble and hypnotic coo of their vocals swim along, dragging the listener beneath its beguiling surface into a swathe of subtle time changes and guitar prone to sudden swan dives into heart-stabbing gold arcs from oil painting-thick landscapes. For all the talk of Siouxsie Sioux (present on mixing duties) passing on her thorny goth crown, Warpaint's is a different darkness, not delighting in splendour or show, but in deftly exploring a bleak internal, romantically bereft landscape.
It's our good fortune that such a unique band exists to cut through the artifice of namedropping and cribbed influences. And for that, we should wear their stripes with pride.

Krimson, b-strana singla "Elephants"... njihov EP Exquisite Corpse iz prosle godine.