Review Summary: “Society is all but rude to this delicious solitude.”
Lost in a sea of trees, angsty white college students, and noise. Electra 2000 begins with a soft whisper of notes that flow in like a calm breeze stirring a pile of dead leaves up on the forest floor. All you see is a distorted black and white world as the sound of the rhythm section joins in crawling toward your ears, creating an unrelenting tension. But why are we living in fear here in this strange new world? Why are we on edge? Could it be the sight of the rhinoceros adorned on the cover? Or is it how the buried sufferings of our lives are being opened up like a christmas present that holds for you a mere lump of coal? In this state of lassitude and confusion this train of thoughts abruptly end until you step on twig signaling the dichotomous flourishing of emotions one will feel from this moment on which are anger and sorrow.
With crushing riffs, an unrelenting rhythm section and laconic vocals Hum carves its niche into your bark with a knife that cuts in so deep that the cicatrice they leave become just as apart of you as the hair on your ass. The record here contains a solid set of songs raging in this aforementioned duel spectrum that show an early yet more developed band compared to their debut Fillet Show. Throughout its 40 minute run time you will walk across on moonbeams and meet a white guy from the future. But the water here is getting too high because throughout each of these songs singer/rhythm guitarist Matt Talbot shares with us his vitriol and his melancholy emotions in each of these songs. But these range of emotions limit one from seeing anything good about the bleak wilderness we have entered into.
As the night draws near and obscures the vision of the undeveloped nocturnal function for our eyes. The loneliness and solitude found in songs like Pewter and Double Dip leads into a bubbling tension that causes us to scream out our lungs for help in passages such as Scraper and Sundress. But these screams are lost within the sounds of growling bear like guitar riffs. Leaving one to run away with a duplicity of emotions akin to sadly suffering from a bi-polar disorder. Never in the dark, musky forest night does there seem to be a way out as the path you follow continues winding along in Winder. But by the end of this we will ask ourselves, do we find solace in this cathartic experience in this heavy fuzzed out land?
Perhaps many do as the filled musical space that leaves no room for logical contemplation serves as a place to relive these past emotions in this land of the lost. But this divided double spectrum does not serve up enough variety for many listeners as they divulge into each song on the record. But here in this jungle wasteland though, development is taking place as the seeds are being sown to prepare you for who you truly always preferred…the astronaut of course. Then afterwards you can take the plummet downwards towards heaven were you can Hum away in sonic bliss. But here in the black and white world of Electra 2000, it contains a less developed and more angry piece of music that fills a more adolescent mood that many will want to continue to dwell in.
Though do not let this deter you, for to answer the call of the wild, all iron clad and prepared to spend a brief moment in this cosmic forest will be rewarding in helping you gain your first forestry merit badge. Then you can of on to pursue greater things such as the emptiness of space and the vast mystery that is our worlds oceans. The Fresh Aire will do you some good too, as it is better to change it up once in a while from always letting the devil and god rage inside you.
