January 16, 2006
the fiction // names
Filed under: noise, record reviews -- catherine @ 2:41 am
The Fiction
names
Waking Records
Alas, The Fiction are no more. I really did like this band. I have to say, though, that when the future historians of millenial hardcore dig up The Fiction's albums for posterity, names will not be among the landmark findings.
The Fiction really peaked on their first full-length, i told her that i like living in a box, a top-to-bottom solid collection of artful, passionate songs. There were the foundations of craft--spare, intricate guitarwork and rhythmic complexity--supporting the band's emotional power and searing vocals. The lyrics were devastatingly sincere ("we are the proud! we are the righteous! we are the hope! we are the light!"), and there was a lovely Joy Division cover to boot. With names, we find the band older, less focused, more bent on ripping-shit-up than on taking the time to write memorable songs. Most of the tracks on names are built on thick, cumbersome guitars and unimaginative riffs that tend to go on for a little too long. The songs are competent, but they don't linger in the mind much past the last note.
A good measure of this assessment is based on personal taste--I have a strong preference for nimble dissonance, and a marked prejudice against sludgy riffs--and, more generally, this album would have made a stronger impression had it been able to escape the shadow of the band's excellent first lp. And there are, to be sure, a handful of standout tracks on names: "reset" starts with a simple, haunting bassline and builds on it little by little, until suddenly you realize you're listening to a sweeping epic. "27" is a song of angular dissonance--admittedly, the first few bars sound just like Slint, but what doesn't these days--that breaks into a plaintive chorus of "here's a toast! to not ending up! another cliché!" It's lines like that--expressions of pure desperation that would be ridiculous if they weren't so sincere--that make The Fiction, at their best, stand out from among the host of screamo/hardcore bands out there.
Even among the weaker tracks, there are some fascinating hints of potential. Had The Fiction stayed together and made more music, we might have seen them evolve into something more noisy and self-consciously artistic. There are some long, fuzzy arcs of sound on "ditko", the album's last track, that transcend the limits of hardcore-sludge and start to sound a little like something out of Daydream Nation. It doesn't quite work, but it's a striking turn. There's an idea--rediscovering Sonic Youth's old avant-garde sound via hardcore. And although such paths can no longer be explored under the "Fiction" moniker, look, perhaps, to the band members' new projects to finish what names, at its very last moment, had started.
