Soiled Life

Album Review

A short-lived Seattle quartet who broke up before they could manage to release their debut album — most of the group went on the form the more extreme and noisy Chromatics — the Soiled Doves were post-post-punkers seemingly heavily influenced by the likes of Gang of Four, James Chance & the Contortions, and the Au Pairs, without the dubby atmospherics and funk influence but with angular riffs and fractured song structure to spare. On Soiled Life the track "Soiled Doves" even works in a mutated dance rhythm similar to the sort of thing the New York no wavers were getting up to in the early '80s. The brash, unpolished production gives the album an almost demo-like quality that works in the songs' favor; with more polish, the resemblance to the Golden Palominos' too-slick debut album would have been unfortunate. Recommended for fans of the Chromatics, Erase Errata, or other neo-no wavers, but perhaps too extreme for those who actually thought the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were as outrageous as their hype suggested.