Cassette by Viet Cong (review)

Back in 2014, I wrote about a dozen record reviews for a website called Buzz and Howl. It was later hacked and disappeared into the ether. This is one in a series of posts intended to preserve that work, unedited. 

Viet Cong, Cassette 

Out of the ashes of Calgary's beloved Women, who broke up back in 2010--two months after releasing their second album and right at the beginning of a tour to support it--rises this more scrappy and lively phoenix. Viet Cong’s debut has been kicking around for a little while now, though you’d be forgiven for having missed it, as it was originally sold only at their live shows--and only on cassette. But now is the the time to catch up with this great EP, as the band have already recorded their follow-up full-length and plan to release it later this year.

Cassette opens with “Throw It Away,” a Magazine-esque pairing of jagged jangle on guitar with an occasionally squiggling synth. The vocals have a bit of that anthemic Buzzcocks vibe and the whole thing kinda reminds of Wire, actually, keeping us squarely in the late-70’s UK scene. The next track, “Unconscious Melody,” keeps the jangling guitars but pins them to the back of a thick bassline and trades up the vocals to the 80s--the Psychedelic Furs or Echo and the Bunnymen, perhaps. “Oxygen Feed,” the third track, rambles along like a Deerhunter outtake with a shambling prettiness due to the conflict between the parts-as-played and the lo-fi production techniques. “Static Wall” builds on this subtle psych approach, sounding like a slightly more clear-eyed Sic Alps.

I don’t mean to suggest that Viet Cong are wholly derivative of cool sounds of the past, or their contemporaries (Women, who had the same rhythm section as Viet Cong, once toured with Deerhunter). This EP does what the debut, short-form release of a new band should do: it explores a number of possible musical directions--and it has some fun. Covers are a good way for a group of musicians to figure out where their Venn diagrams of musical taste overlap, and Viet Cong throw in what--judging by the authentically small crowd noise at the start of the track--sounds like a live one with Bauhaus’s “Dark Entries.”

Coming after “Structureless Design,” the most abrasive and dark song Cassette has to offer, the cover gives some context to the seeming left-turn of the earlier track’s deep vocals and sudden shreds of screeching noise. The closing track, “Select Your Drone,” deploys some of that screeching noise within the body of the song, which, with its rumbling/rolling drums and tribal shouts, is full-on early-Can kosmiche, and a wonder to behold. Starting off with two minutes of low-and-slow prettiness and ending, after a bit of silence, with some Blade Runner-ish synth, “Select Your Drone” is a microcosm of the EP’s eclecticism, and goes a long way towards binding it all together.

In seven tracks, Viet Cong throw a lot at the wall; happily, much of it sticks. But every release can’t be this eclectic or a group of musicians, no matter how great the individual tracks they make together, has a hard time forming an identity as a band that captures the imagination of listeners who are anticipating that next release because they both can and can’t picture what exactly it will be. At this early point in the story of Viet Cong, I’m very excited to find out what pieces of Cassette they chose to polish and hone into the sound of their first full-length.