Nurses: Hangin Nothin But Our Hands Down

By: Alibastard | in: Music |

These guys should be enormous.

Their nearly idyllic, subtle blend of tinny guitar, electronic texture, cool summer organ, and Jeckyl and Hyde vocals trip gracefully through 12 expert, unconventional, completely rock and roll and yet 100% gripping works.
And the trick – more than anything: the seamless segue. In single seconds Nurses traverse melancholic cool and then throw you into maniacal exaltation. They bat your ears around like kittens, get dynamic, cool off, do backing vocals reminiscent of Andre 3000’s A Love Below (with “God kills almost every one of us” think “Dracula’s wedding”), conjure more subdued Mister Bungle, somewhere maybe they tap the ancient Modest Mouse fidgets, rip licks that make you want padded cells, and seem to react to their own music within the minutes they’re playing it. These songs are self-aware without being self-conscious, sexy without put-ons, intelligent without tripping on their SAT scores, and textured just to the point of wanting more.
In short, there’s no flooding of the engine. But the car can’t help but pump the gas.

Things start with “And Now the Curse of Marjorie”. Introduced by two abrupt electronic hits as if to say WAIT, and entering into a petition, their words initiate a story. A level headed break-beat kind of dips in and out, miles away from any techno affiliation, building with its stop-and-go rhythm to a chorus you imagine sung by Fates or some such supernatural form, soaked in daily pathos enough to nearly like it. Is it me, or is the chorus book-ended by an intro and an outro? And then the song ends on a swelling bridge. I don’t mean to be the asshole who starts breaking things down structurally – but god damn – these guys are the Erik Satie of modern rock, and they do it so organically you hardly notice.

Nurses - And Now The Curse of Marjorie

As “Curse of Marjorie” leaves you wanting, “Alone at Last” keeps you hungry, exploring suburban paranoia with sing-song quirk, building to an emotive finish that gives you temporary goosebumps before melting away into distant dog chatter. And at this point, there’s a sense of no return.
“Lots of Brass” needs no introduction. Throws itself instantly into some filthy rock out, the band’s unsteady, yapping voice sparking the chatter, then jumping into an up-tempo, crooning sentiment (everyone’s nervous, all of the time, everyone’s worried I’ll get mine).

And the album just keeps going, pushing you gently into the rooms of endlessly new moods, their ingenuity never sacrificing a sense of deliberate and fully formed music making. Within these walls shit gets broken, then gets fixed. You peruse the love seat, a parade of jungle clowns run through doing hardcore dances, somewhere a swamp-thing Synth pad croaks like a horny toad, a rag-tag a cappella group falls through the ceiling, then falls asleep or dead. Iggy Pop’s son yells haughty lyrics through the window, accompanied by a ragtime pianist, is cut short by a grim reaper with a downer mantra. One of Thom Yorke’s more flowery piano accompaniments flutters through. Things simmer down. A/C clicks on and you start sinking into a waterbed just as line of zombie hillbillies roll past gyrating in a Congo line for “Marching in Places”, a chorus of phantom chain gang workers yelling in here and there before you close your eyes and music ends.

Nurses: Lots Of Brass

Together, Aaron, Bobby, Charlie and John, Chicago’s new answer to raucous, throaty mayhem, gleam with a expert, gritty varnish, too jittery to be condemned by certain classification, and too self-actualized to be overlooked. Their sound is wild, anxious, absurd and sincere. It yaps and croons and kills your need for new approach.
These guys should be enormous. And they probably will be.

Nurses - Alone at Last

Nurses - Official Site
Nurses on MySpace

Posted on July 9, 2007

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