Talk Normal | Sugarland

FRESH BAKED
in NYC
Talk Normal
Sugarland
2009 | Rare Book Room
A-

The first word that pops into my head listening to Sugarland, the first full-length from Brooklyn duo Talk Normal, is “industrial.” I’m hesitant to use the word, because I think it dredges up sonic images of the band Ministry and early Nine Inch Nails, and Sugarland definitely has none of the amped-up speed of those folks. (Yet, despite its ambient leanings, Sugarland isn’t a snooze either.) The “industrial” sound I’m referring to above most closely resembles the sonic landscape of the film Eraserhead by David Lynch.

The second and possibly strongest track of the album, “In a Strange Land,” features a start-stop guitar crunch punctuated by percussive crashes that sound like being stuck in a stylized assembly line or a particularly antiquated elevator. Layered on top of this foundation is a frantic, almost tribal drumbeat, and intermingling vocals by guitarist Sarah Register and drummer Andrya Ambro that shriek, pant and float serenely, delivering lyrics like “Help me/ I’m a stranger/ In a strange land/ Don’t push me away.”

The band’s Downtown New York/No Wave influences are pretty apparent (they’re even named after a Laurie Anderson song, for gosh sakes), and the comparisons to Lydia Lunch and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O that are frequently lobbed at them seem fair enough, but the band is far from hamstrung by their predecessors. Register and Ambro are equally inventive as performers and writers, easily distinguishing themselves and defining their sounds as their own. Ambro’s drumming is primal without being primitive, and it maintains much of the forward momentum of many of the tracks. Register, for her part, very rarely gets into conventional guitar heroics, instead preferring dirge-y guitar squalls, which, on most of the tracks, are layered into soundscapes of fuzzed-out tones.

With he low guitar melody she executes on “Mosquito,” another standout track, Register even comes close to resembling her counterpart in that other guitar-drums duo, Jack White of The White Stripes, although Register’s melody is far simpler and more hypnotic than White’s usually are. Register’s guitar work on this track is also nicely complimented by Ambro’s offbeat percussion, which sounds at first like she is scraping a stick over the back side of an air conditioner, then gets more complex and polyrhythmic, and then recedes again.

The only misstep on Sugarland, and it’s not a big one, is the cover of Roxy Music’s “In Every Dream Home a Heartache,” where Register too closely mimics and exaggerates Bryan Ferry’s stammering vocal cadence for the first half of the 6-minute track. Talk Normal nearly completely rescue the song, however, with an outstanding closing section triggered by Ferry’s iconically ridiculous proclamation to a blow-up doll, “I blew up your body/ But you blew my mind.” Where Roxy Music followed that cue with self-conscious ’70s rock guitar wankery, Talk Normal explode into an invigorating blast of noise more suited to their style.

The closing track, “Outside,” features a squonky saxophone part reminiscent of Ornette Coleman or (perhaps more aptly for this quintessentially New York band) John Zorn. It’s a choice that excitingly seems to suggest that Talk Normal would be willing to expand their sonic palette further in the future. Whether such expansions develop or not, Talk Normal establishes themselves with Sugarland as a band whose output will be worth following.

by Justin Remer