Enablers...

Man I love these guys. I can't even say why since their sound falls well outside of my usual listening habits. As i've mentioned many times before I have a pretty huge and constantly oscillating pop detector. I love melody and organization and verse/chorus/verse song structure. Enablers (no "the" please), who share a label (Neurot) with some of music's heaviest acts, are not metal and not really very "noise" instead they've carved out an odd niche that wavers between rock and spoken word. Pete Simonelli handles the vocal duties for Enablers and speaks, or more acurately conjures, poetic stories filled with dark hole in the wall bars, sooty city streets, and characters both imbued with and denied hope. The combination of the music and Simonelli's deeply confident voice produces a thick mix that sounds like a warped radio transmission from a fog shrouded gothic town, a place where the sun is constantly battling to burn through the haze.

When I started this blog one of my early posts regarded their excellent last album Endnote but the new record, due out in March called Output Negative Space, ups the ante. Simonelli is still spinning his yarns of the downtrodden full of literate poetic language and clever turns of phrases but the music has gone to another level. There's certainly no sign of any traditional song structure and definitely nothing resembling verse/chorus/verse. As with Endnote the music wraps itself around Simonelli's narratives, chasing them, giving them form and emotion, walling them off and opening them up as appropriate. But now there are patches of melody and a symetric attention to phrasing that gives the ear something to fix on and follow. It's an excellent record that has the ability to reveal itself in ways both musical and lyrical with each listen. Coming in March and highly recommended.

1 song from Output Negative Space:

Sudden Inspection

2 from Endnote:

About Last Night

Pauly's Last Days in Cinema

Purchase Endnote here