Rhythm Pigs
Rhythm Pigs / Choke on This

From El Paso (Texas) to San Francisco, with the mission of leaving the tex-core sound, so soaked in whiskey and tequila, to marinate in the restless night of the Californian metropolis. Other native hardcore bands from the Lone Star State had migrated to the far more liberal Frisco, in the early '80s: Dicks, Stains/MDC, DRI, Verbal Abuse. In the mid-decade, it was the turn of the Rhythm Pigs, a band as acrobatic as few others, remarkably ignored by a good part of rock encyclopedias, yet the creator of futuristic music. It would be reductive to speak of "southern-core," another stylistic and conceptual oxymoron made possible by those experimenting with the usual three rock instruments, without really setting limits. With their first, self-titled and best album, dated 1984, the power-trio from El Paso compresses and dilates, depending on the mood, apathetic poems of disorientation, refracts the artificial lights of signs and street lamps into chameleonic and intoxicating scores, distills the bitter tears of a defeated generation, sublimating them into pieces that, despite frequent tempo changes, reconsiderations, comings and goings, do not lose a single gram of intensity.

They were Ed Ivey (voice and bass), Greg Adams (guitar), Jay Smith (drums). Three illustrious unknowns, but capable of anything. The rhythmic framework put up by Ivey and especially Smith is a continuous back and forth, an eternal repositioning, just like on those torrid summer nights when you twist and turn every thirty seconds in bed, permanently uncomfortable and dissatisfied. Adams' guitar, although set on the frequencies of the southern blues-rock, is blurry and nauseating, in the grip of alcohol and a fatalistic feeling torn between Flipper and Mission Of Burma. Ivey's frayed vocal cords, at last, sound as if Lee Ving of Fear had been beaten to a pulp for going a bit too far; or like a Mike Palm of Agent Orange after having emitted the last, useless "cry for help in a mad world."

Somnambulism, impotence, solitude, sluggishness, sometimes anxiety: these are what the Rhythm Pigs express. Wandering with oneself, in the heart of the night through the semi-deserted streets of any city, staggering from the alcohol rate and knocked down by a race, life, whose rules we have never understood. Yet forced to survive: this is "Human Drama," the absolute masterpiece of the album, inaugurated by a very gloomy slide-guitar, dragged with weight on the tracks of a wave-blues illuminated by neon, only to stall in a chorus that is worth a shrug. In light of songs like this, the Big Black of "Bad Houses" comes to mind, but also some films of Martin Scorsese. Of course "Taxi Driver," but not only. Also the para-medic protagonist of "Bringing Out The Dead": in "Six," the guitar truly seems the echo of an ambulance, hallucinatory, infernal, while Ivey once again counts sheep in vain.

Sometimes, however, it's others who take the sad drunkenness, and we are called to witness the show: "Conditional Love" is the rant of a soaking drunk, after hours spent in a suburban bar, unable to stand up, but with an extreme need to communicate and share personal malaise. Tossed in the usual elastic of pauses and resumes, it is a track that never loses immediacy and audacity: hardcore, noise, and indie are all meaningless words faced with tracks like these. The Rhythm Pigs' tendency to suddenly turn, without signaling, or even to make a U-turn, emerges with the utmost effectiveness in two exemplary moments: "Taxi Cab" tries to shadow a derelict who struggles between one chase and the next, then takes a breath and lays down on the sidewalk; "Searching For Myself" does the reverse path, first laying out a mantra and then twisting it.

However, there is not only commiseration in this album. Because sometimes you have to react. Or at least try. If "Machines Are In" unexpectedly unleashes a breathtaking rhythm, when in reality there would be little to pogo for, the powerful funk-core of "Dr. Harley" and especially of "Break Or We'll Break Your Face" beats NoMeansNo on their own ground. The crossover of the Rhythm Pigs is never a sterile one, nor a bland mixture of genres: there is always a great communicative will and expressiveness that draws strength from the sincerity of inspiration, more than from technical skills.

At least in this album. The following "Choke On This" (1986) indeed will lose much of this strength, settling into a sly revival now rock'n'roll, now southern, now psychedelic, thinning out the mixture and losing the existential breath. But their debut remains a remarkable expressionist painting of human unhappiness, the honest contribution of hardcore culture to a universe of sensations that, still today, too often is believed to be out of the reach of humble rock musicians.