"Crows" by Sexy, Por Vida LP (2006)

Download track here, while it lasts.

The most appealing thing about sloppy music is that it imparts emotion directly, bypassing the impulse to do so sensibly (or in some cases listenably). Sloppy music is good precisely because it feels good when it sounds like it shouldn't work. The listener may not be able to make out the individual instruments, or the words, vocal melody, or even the rhythm, but is nonetheless thrilled by something other than the success of those individual elements. It feels good-- it quickens your step and makes your blood race, even as it constantly reminds you that it isn't making you any smarter.

Oakland's Sexy, however, do sound like smart guys (and smartasses, though often the two are inextricable), but they also sound like they've got personal problems and probably drinking problems as well. What you can hear of the lyrics are clever, plaintive, snotty, and occasionally suicidal. But you can't really hear the lyrics most of the time-- the entirety of Por Vida is several glorious slight steps above white noise. The band plays what might be diminutively described as East Bay pop punk-- certainly descendent of the punk-party-positivity of Operation Ivy, the melodic malaise of Jawbreaker, and the energetic earnestness of Crimpshrine ("Pink Elephants," another track on Por Vida, even includes a whistle solo that outdoes Crimpshrine's "Butterflies").

While the music is frenetic and loud and hurtles forward at a high tempo, what marks it is the fact that each individual part of it sounds as though it could have been made with cardboard boxes and broken glass. Were they not so well-played, the cymbals and drums could easily be the sound of smashed bottles and boots stomping on boxes. If you can imagine cardboard being torn musically, that's what the guitars sound like; the bass is like that too, except lower. The only non-recyclable part of the deluge is singer/guitarist Ashley's frenzied yelp occasionally rising above the din to cheerily explain things like, "The only way I can explain that you're gone is that I'm dead to the world."

It sounds like garbage, but it's not-- in spite of the terrific noise, every member of Sexy is very good at what they do. The music is horridly recorded, sure, and the instruments are no doubt cheap, but the band plays tightly and fervently. Guitarist Ashley is a more accomplished player than most punk rock guitarists, playing careful high-speed parts with strained grace. He's well aware of how the guitar sounds and seems to treat it less as an instrument and more as an item that makes a loud noise, but even that he does distinctly-- I'm particularly fond of the little guitar barks he emits following the brief drumroll-rests in the chorus to signify that the music will continue. There's natural and palpable talent under there if you pick the scab of the recording far enough away to hear it. As such, it's unfair to call this "sloppy"-- the only thing truly sloppy about this song (or the rest of the album) is the recording. Yet the poor recording is part of what's great about this track. Having all instruments and vocals striking so directly and consistently into the red gives the song the adrenalized dizziness of pure energy. It feels more than it sounds, and the feeling it communicates is exhiliration.

Lyrically it's a broken-heart song, but from the sample at the beginning of a smarmy voice bleating The Smiths, it's clearly one that deliberately eschews the self-absorbed preciousness of popular songs of love and loss in favour of the profanity and hysteria of real heartache. Ironically, the song's subject matter is exponentially self-indulgent than anything Morrissey could weep up. The snatches of lyrics that fight through the bedlam of the music are cartoonishly despondent (lines like "I'm stuck in this world where nobody loves me, nobody wants me, and nobody holds me" have kin in other tracks on the album -- "All I want is someone to love me. Til death. Til death" in "Xmas Song" or the point in "Valentine's Day" at which Ashley suggests, "I'll put my head in the oven"), but instead of wallowing in it the band is sweating the misery out. Beneath the noise, the song's melody is clean and pure and even joyful, kicked forward by the frantic tempo.

Revelling in unintelligibility, the song races along gathering mass and speed like a filthy snowball bounding down a ski hill full of mud and sticks and discarded mitt-warmers and hot-chocolate cups, headed for the cheerful unsuspecting lovers enjoying their apres-ski at the lodge. Sexy is angry about love and bent on destruction, whether for themselves, their instruments, the venues they're playing, or their listeners ears. It sounds like fun.