Drainolith

I wrote about the first song on Hysteria for Pitchfork a bit ago, and will get into the whole album there after it comes out in June. So here’s a chance to delve into “Inside and Outside (Bog’s Blues)”, the album’s second song and, true to its name, a simultaneously straight and off-angled tune. It starts in a haze of fuzz and Alexander Moskos’ dead-eyed intonations. His voice is like the song’s Grim Reaper, guiding it to its the end while the tornado of death swirls around him, neither hyping the terror nor cracking a smile.

The sounds pelt like confetti blown from a cannon, but “Inside and Outside” is at core one big, simple riff, sliced into pieces and doused in flames. That this riff is rather Royal Trux-ian is not shocking (Neil Hagerty produced this session, which in turn produced the excellent Dan’l Boone) nor is it particularly important. Because Moskos pulls off this kinda trick a lot regardless of the sounds he uses, smelting together a tune that sounds somehow re-de-constructed, its basic elements built, torn, and reconstituted such that, like a Hubble staring into space, you can hear the track’s past, present, and future at once.

-Marc Masters