(2020) Parlor Walls - Heavy Tongue


Review:
No wave is music built on the idea of opposition — a rollercoaster of sound that alternates between discordant melodies and noisy, belligerent textures. The Brooklyn group Parlor Walls channel that spirit on their latest LP Heavy Tongue, creating a type of music that they call “anti-melody.” The duo of Alyse Lamb & Chris Mulligan have retained the throbbing percussion and sheets of sound that characterized their 2018 EP EXO, but here, they’ve stripped it down to a kind of raw, instinctive energy. Heavy Tongue thrives on a tension that’s never resolved. The thundering drum patterns on opening track “Birds of Paradise” recall the ritualistic beats Budgie summoned for The Creatures, hammering away beneath tight, stabbing guitars and a low, persistent drone. Lamb’s vocals swing from beckoning to threatening; on “Lunchbox,” over queasy keys and hammering drums, she menacingly repeats, “Is it power you adore? Or is it love you are after?” By contrast, on “Violets”—the closest the album comes to a pop song—she playfully alternates between Tina Weymouth-style speak-singing and a gentle melodic croon. And on closing track “Rails,” her voice floats eerily over a raucous industrial pulse and gnarled tangles of guitar. Moments like these suggest Parlor Walls aren’t entirely “anti-melody;” but they retain enough of no wave’s oppositional spirit that even at their sunniest, they’re only seconds away from a storm.





Tracklist:
01 - Birds of Paradise
02 - Game
03 - Lunchbox
04 - Violets
05 - Pinafore - Ignite
06 - Spinning Gold
07 - Rails


Media Report:
Genre: post-punk
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits