Broken Water
Whet

THE REVIEW

Kanako, Abigail, and Jon. Knowing that they are from Olympia, WA and aligned - note the collective female plural - with hardcore feminist riot positions against the patriarchalism of the scene, you'll immediately think of another trio, later settled in Portland, which decided to reunite this year to somewhat unexpected acclaim from everyone: the Sleater-Kinney. Idols. Kanako, for instance, is the kind of person who, when seeing too many potentially innocent males in the audience, strips naked - completely naked - and goes back to her work on the drums: some would say she's an attention-seeking whore, or that it's counterproductive femenism, or a 1968-style anachronism; I say it's a great way to communicate disdain for the parvenu males of the scene and the world in general, a great way to distance oneself, to protect while establishing oneself. And if Henry Rollins could do it, then so can she, and no one should protest. After all, you might have seen photos of femen with censorship not just on their private parts but even on their nipples: so, anachronistic I would not say.

Musically, the legacy of Sleater-Kinney can be found in Web's garage - along with some Beat Happening - and in Kanako's warrior-like, Amazonian singing in Hear.

Hear is an essay of epic in the strict sense: the bass - tremulous and fuzzy - is the rhythmic grunt of a giant, while that predatory harpy growl is the guitar - a sister to the other one, tremendous, of A Place to Bury Strangers - and the riff is an inexorable march, perhaps with an oriental touch, and you'll forgive my lack of familiarity with oriental mythology: anyway, the riff is one of those angry flame-spewing dragons; an Amazonian assault on horseback, I said - read a change of dynamics, an acceleration - toward the finale, which hobbles and slows down almost into doom territory, like an Oedipus wandering blind and with twisted guts. It all unfolds in that mythical cave of reverb called Shoegaze, in which many poet-singers before Broken Water have set their heroes' exploits: here we are at the dirty and cursed drift of the Loop lineage and the decaying side of the Jesus and Mary Chain. But only concerning the noise frying of the guitar, the swampy dirtiness of the sound, the slightly laid-back drums, and the frankly dark mood.

Because for the rest, Broken Water seems to look more at the edges outside their genre, more at the alternative side, more at the early Dinosaur Jr. works, minus Murph's deadly dynamics and apart from the final ballad, Kamilche House, which is perhaps the only orthodox shoegaze. Thus, Memory could more or less fit into Bug, and Abigail's incredibly untidy voice, the bassist, succeeds in the challenge - not an easy one for a woman - to remind us of J Mascis. But the bass work is incredible: Lou Barlow school, without a doubt; that school that teaches you to work with saturation, because when you let the gain go on the bass, you can take the Big Muff - by the way, even the inferior bass one - and sell it to novices. But I'm not so informed about Abigail's setup, so I'm working only by ear and could easily be wrong. And again, Lou Barlow's Sebadoh returns in Jon's tone and the emotional and slightly off-key vocal line of Say What's On Your Mind, with its fuzzy and lo-fi bursts in Bakesale style. They seem to look at Dinosaur Jr. also and above all for how they manage the three-piece configuration, with over-abundant bass and a constantly creative guitarism that at times builds, at times tears down, never tame.

The hieratic nature of Heal starts with a bass drone and doesn't let go, while the guitar suddenly drops from the hyperuranium and devastates, ending in the harmonics and tremolo of a finale that closely resembles the offbeat angularities of Polvo, certain Tsunami, and all that radical American alternative scene.

When the waters break in Olympia, out come power-trios of feminists without fear, who play great - it seems. Except for Jon, the guitarist, who has the guts, but also long hair. Five years have passed since this record, which then winds up in half an hour over eight tracks; Broken Water are still standing, and the times should be ripe for a new long-distance work. Wait for it with confidence.