Mark E. Smith, famous and infamous for his band The Fall, famously sang, “’Cos we dig, ’Cos we dig, We dig, We dig repetition, We dig repetition, We've repetition in the music, And we're never going to lose it…This is the three Rs, The three Rs: Repetition, repetition, repetition.” Guess what the song was titled? You got it.
Smith is one of the preeminent Shakespearean clown of our late-capitalist theatre (second only, perhaps, to America’s Buffoon-in-Chief, the chief of the no-nothings, Curious George himself). And his repetitious lyrics hit one over the head clownishly with his point: popular music is repetition, and so is everything. Another verse on, Smith sings: “There is no hesitation, This is your situation, Continue a blank generation, Blank generation, Same old blank generation…”
And, like the popular music idiom of which it is a part – and like everything, which I suppose by definition it must be a part – The Year Zero is repetition. Like Smith, they know it and they exploit it as such: a part of their generation’s malaise, a structural concept – an ethos, even.
The group sounds little like Smith’s band does: none of the sharp corners and slovenly drunkenness but instead the smoothness and double-vision of 4 am of a weekend alcoholic’s binge: the colours blur at times, at others they seem vivid and in unfamiliar focus, vertigo setting in.
With some pleasant and carefully-constructed, although innocuous, fuzzed-out pop music, The Year Zero manage to overcome a supremely pretentious band name (there is no Year Zero, yes, but so what?) and a far more pretentious press release. One must simply read a few sentences to get the idea: “When the earth is born again, dream along to the past and the future, to the year zero.” I’ll be sure to do that, Ms. Christine Jewell, press relations officer of Skipping Stones Records, assuming I can figure out what the hell you are trying to say.
Here’s a revision of that sentence for The Year Zero’s press release, provided here as a courtesy to Skipping Stones Records from me, free of charge: “The Year Zero play mid-tempo pop music with a consistent layer of distortion mixed with a healthy dose of reverb on the guitar, and they tend to repeat their musical ideas – which, although sometimes rather interesting, do not deserve such treatment – ad infinitum.” There you go, a much more accurate description.
The Year Zero appear to be a talented group of players content with a mediocre collection of songs. There is hardly enough variation on which to judge the album, although what there is, is not bad at all. For comparable acts, think of a less nuanced and poetical Galaxie 500 (suggested in the press release – would I have thought of that on my own? Perhaps.) or a late-period REM with a bit too much time on their hands and too many guitar effects pedals. In short, quite a nice sound but very little of sincere substance here. This album is certainly a worthwhile investment of your time and money, however, if My Bloody Valentine (damn, another suggestion from that blasted press release) is up your alley.
