Dead Finks

Reviews

Dead Finks New Plastik Abyss cassette

Let’s get this out of the way. “Anodyne” is the best song of the year so far, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. That track is the reason this review is like a month late; I simply could not get past it. The student loans of amazing post-punk. There is tension, there is release, there is a catchy-as-hell chorus and urgent guitars. With that being just the second track, it was almost impossible for the rest of the album to live up to what came before it. But that said, the rest of the album is indeed great. The energy and desperation in the vocal performances are consistently brilliant, the guitars continue to feel urgent, and the battle between tension and release rolls along from track to track. A behemoth of a record that may peak early, but I think you need the last seven tracks just to come down from the heights you reach early on anyway.

Dead Finks The Death and Resurrection of Johnathan Cowboy LP

This album is a chameleon unstuck in time. Every time you look at it, it seems to be on a different plane, in a different form. This is all to say that DEAD FINKS continue a welcome tradition of breaking down and rebuilding what actually constitutes music being “punk.” The results of their experimentation takes familiar-enough roads of driving elastic rhythms and ringing guitars to arrive at destinations wholly fresh and new. Tracks like “Reanimation” lock into the head-bobbing groove of contemporaries such as PARQUET COURTS or even more psych-leaning bands such as WAND, but vocally and lyrically stand out as more impassioned and a good deal more present. The duo, Joseph Thomas and Erin Violet, really sound like they give a damn while coming across as no less cool than more detached present-day punk tinkerers. That’s probably what drives the whole project home for me, a wild-eyed emotionality that offsets the mastery of aesthetics and headiness. It’s no wonder, then, that the band finishes with a cover of the FALL’s “Frightened,” reportedly recorded on the eve of Mark E. Smith’s death. DEAD FINKS’ version is a beautiful closer that couldn’t possibly outshine the original but comes damned close.