Alpha Cop / Carton - Split 7" (white)

There's nothing wrong with riffs.

Some of your favorite bands probably spend like half their time digging for ever-purer veins of the stuff, and we all look happily forward to the loud nuggets they unearth. But what we've got on this split is two bands who blast out riffs in all directions without ever making them sound like the main thing they're after.

The secret, I think, is that what unifies Alpha Cop and Carton is that they're not working for the perfect riff, or devoted to the pleasures of the groove, they're questing for the mother lode of the most fun a band can possibly have, playing songs with the most life in them.

The quest yields some great riffs--blowing cyclonic through Carton's just-barely-out-of-control "Fingertips" and thundering out of nowhere in Alpha Cop's "The Low Flags"--but more than that, it reveals music with a pulse.

Both bands range widely.

Alpha Cop's number has at least four distinct movements, and a lot of moving parts: plaintive campfire shouting, growling metal chords, a long, ever-mutating, drone that lopes rhythmically, chiming instrumental indie-rock.

The pulse is what keeps every moment a coherent--and damned potent--part of a whole. A kick-ass whole. Sprawling, reaching, inclusive, this is experimental rock that's unqualified in its success.

Similarly searching, Carton's contribution wrings out every drop from loud-ass guitars, big shouts, and a fierce determination to annihilate the line between order and chaos.

Riffs and fills crash against each other, overlap, throb and pulse, surge and froth, and stop about as often as ocean waves.

Carton pushes every note hard, uses every nerve and sinew to take the song further, make more racket, strike more of themselves into the music, squeeze more joy out of playing it.

This 7" is entirely organic, made with muscle enough to hit hard, lungs enough to scream, and heart enough to know sometimes screaming works best when everything's quiet.

There's two great songs here.

More importantly, both songs have a pulse, and a hell of a lot of life in them.