Of Course

Album Review

Make Believe — the unholy union of Joan of Arc's guitarist Sam Zurick and vocalist Tim Kinsella, with his cousin Nate on drums and Wurlitzer and bassist Bobby Burg — spit up their second full-length on Flameshovel. Apparently Nate Kinsella spent a couple of months in jail in Oklahoma for "outraging public decency" after taking off his shorts on-stage and ringing them out over the crowd at a Christian youth venue. Thankfully, it was only a misdemeanor and he only had to pay a grand and do the time. Anyway, the record was recorded after that frustrating experience, and as such it's a very different outing from either their self-titled EP or last year's Shock of Being (which was released on the same date — October 3 — a year prior). While the previous album featured a more straight-ahead hard rocking sound, Of Course is more angular, quirky, and just plain weird. That said, it's exciting, full of unexpected twists and turns where steely guitar riffs give way to spaces, rough edges and time shifts. It isn't prog or anything — it's about as far as you could get from that, actually, it's the opposite — it's primitive. But make no mistake, the wildly experimental direction here is done with rather conventional instrumentation and these tunes are crafted as songs and do come off that way, even the rather petulant instrumentals such as the brief and beautiful "Coup d'Thought." Other tracks meander just a bit before biting hard, like "Bisect Duality," or come out of the gate swaggering, like "A Song About Camping," only to be turned inside out on the next cut, "Another Song About Camping." This is music that is instantly compelling, utterly irritating, and beguilingly addictive. Get it.