Few things in life help a shitty day like coming home and finding that familiar rectangular card board box lying in wait for you on the porch. A new record! Tear it open, quickly discard the riffraff and drop the needle onto that sweet yet subtly grooved piece of vinyl. Jack up the volume, ignore the feedback from the receiver and wait for the needle to find traction with that magical friction. What follows next is a wall of sound so loud, so dense and so magnificent that the stresses of the day melt into the crazed delirium of pure sonic energy; the walls shake, the dog hides, the neighbors swear and you relax . . .
Or you could find The Anarchy and the Ecstasy, the latest offering from The World/Inferno Friendship Society(WIFS) spinning feebly on your turn table as you fumble helplessly for some magical knob that will turn up the intensity on the recording and save you from a further humiliating confrontations with your bleak reality.
For the uninitiated WIFS is a loose collection of musicians based in NYC and centered around Jack Terricloth. Baroque-punk is the most common term used to describe their musical output (think the Clash meet the NY Philharmonic.) At their best they sound like a piano being beaten to death by an electric guitar as the drums watch in horror. At their worst they are in a word . . . boring. Anyone who has heard Me v. The Angry Mob can attest that the potential of this "band" is worth sitting through 5 songs a record that sound like chamber music. The Ecstasy and the Agony however doesn't have a track or even a moment that reaches the manic energy of WIFS at their best. Terricloth's verses are his normal fare, bleak stories of sorrow and violence that transport the listener/reader to the shadows of some gritty city street where the dredges of society lurk and eye you from the shadows.
"So, take it on the chin, shut up and sing. Like the veins in my arms, like the tattoos on your skin. One nights upon night, blank cassettes and cigarettes. Like lilacs off the tongue, this was supposed to be fun." - The Politics of Passing Out -
But the backing on The Agony and the Ecstasy brings the whole experience down. It isn't bad, it's is a fun listen, but there is no track that reaches the level of manic energy that is WIFS at their best. The record sort of meanders along on it's own path and time with no clear destination or urgency. The lyrics speak of desperation and violence but the accompaniment is lukewarm at best. A little bit more aggression, a lot bit louder and we could have a classic. Instead WIFS is content to fly over the world created by Terricloth when were you really want to be is lying face first on the street as some large fellow with an electric guitar and villainous glint in his eye kicks your teeth back down your throat. As Terricloth chants on Canonize Philip K Dick, OK:
"You can't change the system from within, the system changes you and that should make you panic."
A little panic would have gone a long way towards making this record stand out like Red Eyed Soul, instead it seems destined for a few weeks in the rotation and then relegation as an afterthought in the back of the collection.
Bonus - Download card ready to go. Sticker of the album art. Full lyrics in the liner notes!
6.9/10
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