From September 99' issue of Alternative Press
Check out their webpage: http://www.altpress.com
Filter
Richard Patrick & Co.'s long-awaited follow-up to Short Bus blends edgy psychedelia with earth-shattering fury.
One of the great things about Title Of Record, the follow-up to Filter's 1995 debut, Short Bus, is that it simply exists. When Bus was released, every thimble-headed prick with a word processor compared it to Nine Inch Nails, Filter mainman Richard Patrick's previous employer. So now the only responsible act of contrast should be with Short Bus, not with NIN's The Downward Spiral.
.......... On first listen to Title Of Record, it's apparent that much of Bus' curious slacker sounding aesthetic was conjured by Patrick's former creative foil, Brian Liesegang; thus there's not much scrappy sonic intrigue. Instead, Record emphasizes seamless arrangements and atmospheres within a hard-rock context. Simply put, when he's not banging your head, Patrick is spacing it out. And he's pretty damned good at doing it, too.
..........The seven-minute-plus "Welcome To The Fold" starts as brontosauric stomp for folks who wear their shorts below their kneecaps; the song then downshifts into edgy psychedelia before returning to its original room-smashing fury. "Captain Bligh" is the most pulsing track here, with its frantic guitar riffs and drum & bass percolations creating an amphetamine-fueled urgency for Patrick's confessional tales of betrayal and deceit. "The Best Things" is the best Y2K youth anthem ever recorded ("You know the best things in life aren't for me"), with majestic Killing Joke-ish guitars, primal-scream choruses and a slurred, mind-fucked ending. Patrick's voice is in top form throughout Record, rangling from aggro-confessional mode ("Skinny") to disoriented-psychopath delivery ("It's Gonna Kill Me").
..........Record also features some acoustic-based tracks that attempt to convey different emotions with mixed results. "Take A Picture," a reflection on naked airplane rides, is Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" failing to recieve its 90-days-clean chip from AA. "Miss Blue," a send-off to an ex-lover, is a lachrymose electro-folk elixir of Jane's Addiction's "Jane Says" and the Smashing Pumpkins' more warbly moments. The very existence of the achetypal "breakup song" on a highly pressurized rock record seems cornball, but Patrick's sentiment is more refreshing than that of hoary '80s power-balladeers or the current I-love-her-but-I-had-ta-kill-her posing of insignificant others.
..........Patrick stresses that what you hear on this album is a series of snapshots from his viewpoint: gloriously dysfunctional ("I'm the scum of the earth," he intones during "Cancer") and nerve-damaged. So if Title Of Record alternately sounds fragile and primal, geeky and dangerous, loving and loathing, it's because art imitates life. (Reprise) Thom Prycl
Title Of Record
PRODUCERS: Richard Patrick and Ben Grosse
CO-PRODUCERS: Rae DiLeo and Geno Lenardo
ENGINEERS: Rae DiLeo and Richard Patrick
MIXED: Ben Grosse
STUDIOS: Recorded on lovation at Abyssinian Sons Studio (Chicago) and The Mix Room (Burbank, CA)