It seems like New York trio
Blonde Redhead
have been dogged with
Sonic Youth
comparisons since the day they formed years ago, taking their name from an old song by
No New York
faves
DNA
. Such yakking only grew louder when the group, then a quartet, signed with
Steve Shelley
's
Smells Like
label in 1994 for a pair of LPs, and then let the
drummer produce them. Three years down the road, it's a resemblance still firmly in place on
Fake Can Be Just as Good
, despite the group employing producer
John Goodmanson
and switching labels to Chicago's venerable, powerful
Touch & Go
. But if this stubborn outfit of two handsome Italian-Americans and a pretty Japanese-American doesn't care about being branded copycats, and it seems they don't, then neither should anyone else. Improving with each release, the solid, crashing duo of guitarists (and alternating singers)
Kazu Makino
and
Amedeo Pace
may borrow an ethic, an anti-
pop
stance, and atonal tension that's super-familiar, but the clean sound, direct attack, and straightforward, tense delivery are all their own. Moreover, there's plenty of room for further exploration in these dark, forbidding, tempest-ridden
post-punk
seas. In fact, when
Makino
Pace
get cold, claustrophobic, weird, wired, and chilling (with help from borrowed
Unwound
bassist
Vern Rumsey
) is when they also nearly explode in deep undercurrents: see the best things here, the quietly terrified
"Symphony of Treble"
"Bipolar."
And unlike 95 percent of all bands based on the New York
noise
tradition,
never just grind like nails to chalkboards -- their well-produced sound is never annoying or unpleasant -- nor forget that music is supposed to have hooks, no matter how much it eschews obvious
melodic conventions. Far from mere proteges of any band or scene,
are a unique sub-branch all their own on a fertile tree. ~ Jack Rabid