Let’s start with the name: Untied States is a pretty brilliant sort of moniker for a post-punk group, isn’t it? It’s silly and evocative at the same time, a joke and a threat, the kind of name that gets bands noticed. Not as fond of the album’s title, which seems kind of the opposite of all that, and might actually be the title of a song by Live or Bush or one of those bands, but anon.
The music of this Atlanta trio (augmented heavily by friends) is a lot like its name: a lot of threads that come together in tight knots, then untie themselves again. Hard to pin down a time period, though; a little new wave here, a bit of psychedelia there, punk and grunge aesthetics but with a woozy romanticism, too, somehow. Colin Arnstein’s lead vocals are displaced, echoey, more erased than present–we never know quite what he’s singing about, but we know EXACTLY how he feels on every line, even though most of the songs veer wildly between moods and tempos. But the songs keep moving forward under their own power, thanks to a bunch of drummers and percussionists, including bandmembers Darren Tablan and Satchel Mallon and guest Erin Santini; this record falls apart at full speed.
Occasionally the eccentricity becomes its own purpose, making self-consciously deconstructed pieces like “Wrestling With Entropy in the Rehabbed Factory” less interesting than the ones that have even the tiniest bit of structure–like, for example, “Delusions Are Grander,” the one that follows “Wrestling” on the album. “Delusions” manages to incorporate sound-effects-laden breakdowns, long slow rock riffs, guitar heroics from Skip Englebrecht, and vocals both screamed and moaned. “Not Fences, Merely Masks” is a huge standout because its late-Scott-Walker-era-mass-vocal weirdness is backed up by some rock-solid guitar hooks and harmonies from beyond the grave.
Oh, sure, there’s a bit too much Radiohead here, and it would be nice to figure out just what exactly Arnstein is singing every once in a while (the damn lyric sheet is even hard to read). But when nothing is really wrong, one is not supposed to fix it, so let’s pretend I didn’t say anything and let these guys avant themselves into the stratosphere. I give it two more albums before they are internationally huge, or have broken up. Or both.
