Divorce on Night School Records

No one creates a racket quite the way Divorce does, and they remind me of it every new single that comes my way. This one on Night School Records has a really thick screened heavy cardstock foldover, which was stuck on the inside to a heavy mylar, almost picture disk outer sleeve with a Divorce sticker....making this homemade as hell...a big tear line down one side of the printed sleeve, really great work in making this one stand out.

There was a time when bands like Lightning Bolt, Hella, SIDS and Diet Cola were all I wanted to listen to, at the time it sounded like the most forward looking, original direction for any genre to be attempting...I think if you follow this line of thought you get your Abe Vigoda and Mika Miko, combining that heavy rhythm hardcore noise into punk pop and when Divorce ended up on my radar a little while ago, it brought all that kind of early extremist stuff back for me.

I'm trying to think about what it is about this sound that doesn't get old and a lot of it is the live show so I suppose another branch of the Lightning Bolt tree is some of the glitch electronics stuff like, Dan Deacon in terms of how downright fun and original seeing a band live can be.

But back to Divorce, who all at once take a pure love of hyper rhythms, experimental guitar and Jennie's vocals which are surprisingly clear rising over the weird guitar screechings, the entire fretboard played high to low as a single note on A-Side's "Love Attack". Now that I'm hearing this back to back with yesterday's Aids Wolf, there is a pretty clear connection I never made, Jennie is also coming up with entirely new melody lines for her vocal, even given this solid foundation of pummeling tom beats and gestural distortion, she won't follow any sort of predetermined line, instead reminding me of The Coathangers or White Lung's unique, singing-spoken word style...the difference between Aids Wolf is there's still lyrics here, even if a lot of it is lost in this aggressive chaos, sometimes yelling, but the consistent hollow pop of the snare keeps it headbanging.

B-Side's "Meating" continues to step up the beat, they're really pushing themselves in marrying various strong rhythms together successfully. Jennie also has to be as strong and straightforward as Vickie's riffs and crazy timing drumming. There's nothing timid in any part of it's performance and creation. There's nothing like that combination of shaking tom and kick, single note low end bass and Vickie's growl. There's not much else to say. Someone get a kickstarter together or something to book them in NY. I selfishly want to see them break some ceiling tiles at Death By Audio.

You can order direct from Night School in the UK or head over to Deathbomb arc and add this to the pile of other quality recordings you're going to find there.

Divorce on Gravy Records

Oh god dammit! I remember seeing this video of Divorce playing under a bridge in Glasgow and I was sold immediately, the crazy pure racket created by these 4 is unbelievable. The guitar noises that are created that aren't necessarily melodic, but completely awkward screeches and bursts combined with an odd rhythm drum section and of course Jennie Fulk losing it on vocals...all underneath a bridge. That's really perfect, reckless abandon and damaged noise put together with this energy in an abandoned public space. It's in line with the Coathangers, erase errata, lightning bolt and nu sensae, bordering on not even music, but a performance of music's possibilities...or something.
The A-Side, "Wet Bandit" starts off with Andy Browns cowbell and rimshot snare weirdo timing, and explosive bursts of scuzzy guitar delivered in pure rhythm, the actual melody is an afterthought, who tunes their guitar? Jennie has an equally internal vocal timing that's almost following the crash cymbal, jamming in verse after verse of semi-coherent lyrics. Fighting hard and matching this dense noise, she's changing it up right along with this manic instrumentation. Later, there's a magical call and response of the drums and an almost glitchy electronic distortion, the harmonics of blue box pedal back and forth. It's one new anti-rhythm after another. The silence when it's over is deafening.
B-Side's "Dildine" has that guitar and bass in staccato meltdown again against the fills from Andy, they truly appreciate noise, you can hear this attention to dissonance and those overlooked sounds that when put together like this have their own unique logic. Jennie is tearing through the lyric with energy that doesn't ever just get screamy, just caught up in this hail of sound, the individual phrases, yet another rhythm to contend with. They finally give in to complete noise breakdown in measured perfectly crafted punches, to build it back from scratch, in comes that off timing and gated screech of distortion. Divorce is in control the whole time, granted it's like watching sausage being made, it's messy and can be downright ugly, and not just anyone can do it. It takes a lot of secret ingredients to turn that mess of remnants into something damn good. Divorce please come to NYC.
They have an extensive blog, documenting insane tours, roundabouts and putting weird things on their faces, all of this is done under the pretense of playing some pretty great noise besides.

Get a taste of these tracks from their bandcamp page and order this direct from Gravy Records, or Shellshock either way, your getting this one airmail, but noise innovation is never easy.

Don't forget about their previous "Love Attack" single now available locally from Deathbombarc distro either.