The Chap — The Show Must Go
The band's angular, dissonant riffing is similar to many bands in the category of 'math rock', though The Chap refrains from being too technical in favor of a groovy, straight ahead rock rhythm comparable to Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. The stripped down 4 chord structures and sarcastic melancholy of songs like "He'd Rather Die" are straight out of the early 90's alternative scene, bands like The Pixies and Pavement.
The songs are short, 2-4 minutes on average, and there are also several interlude tracks which are even shorter, with 4 tracks under 30 seconds. The 17 track album is only 35 minutes. The bite size songs generally work well, containing a tasty riff or two each, though a few could have been fleshed out more. The interludes ("That Rich, "Reunited With Cash") are mostly undirected fragments of string noise, feedback and distortion, and seem rather pointless, a few seconds from the rehearsal randomly included. At very least, they didn't deserve to be separate tracks. Listening to the CD without checking track numbers, one would hardly notice these tracks existed at all.
The fuzzy tube amp overdrive is a physically pleasing and nostalgic texture. The band has perfectly control of their tone, cleaning it up for subdued verse sections and rising into high gain sections which are beautifully blown out, a comforting rich and thick wall of sound. The production is crystal clear, perfectly satisfactory as far as guitars and drums go. The vocals, however, are mixed too loud and dry for high volume listening.
Both male and female vocals are consistently present. They harmonize to beautiful ethereal effect in "Social Bob", which is like a lost My Bloody Valentine song. Elsewhere, there are punky spoken and shouted vocals with a heavy British accent and a flat, apathetic tone, as if the words were plainly said to the beat without any particular emotional affect. Their presence feels blunt and raw at times. The lyrics are existential, satirical, a critique of culture.
A good example is the song "Student Experience". This track is a bit of an awkward listen, but perhaps intentionally so, as the lyrics couldn't be more bluntly ironic. They depict the conditioning young people are given as they enter the school system: "I know what I want, I checked the ratings / the feedback is good / I know why I'm here / it's all about my experience / my friend's coming too" with the hilarious chorus "It's all about my student experience / you know I've invested in my student experience", and lines like "make me ready to be market ready" or "meanwhile my friend has expressed interest in doing the same, but with more feeling".
Tracks like "Guitar Messiah" and the aforementioned "Social Bob" demonstrate the great potential of this band for writing melodic, emotional songs. However, most of the album is focused on more rhythmic material, with a number of the songs containing sections where the drums are accompanied by chanting vocals, and the guitar hangs back a bit, stabbing a rhythmic chord or playing nothing at all.
Overall, I liked this album quite a bit, although I didn't know what to make of its blatant awkwardness at first. Some of the songs could use a couple more sections, perhaps, but it's a very listenable disk as a whole. I would recommend it to fans of existential and quirky avant pop rock.