PHEROMOANS - "My Mind Is On The Anti-Climb Paint" LP (Orec)

  It seems that just when I begin to wonder what's become of this band, they drop a brick-ton of new weirdness onto my head, and I spend the next few weeks trying to dissect it.Wedged somewhere between February's stunning "It Still Rankles" LP on Convulsive, and another up and comer LP on Red Lounge, "My Mind Is On the Anti-Climb Paint" is Pheromoans' most recent carnival ride put to tape.If you are familiar with this group, you will know that they come in a different form with each release, a musical variety hour of sorts, usually landing somewhere between beat poetry, improvisation and angular post-punk paranoia."Limited Scope 1 & 2" starts out as a loose, jazzy interlude, backing a rather bizarre two minute jaunt through straight-faced spoken word.Singer Russell Walker mumbles "Eye of the storm/I was always anticipating disaster" in a stern and distorted voice.Soon enough, the song does a total 180, and morphs into a bouncy, half-drunken stumble through choppy acoustic guitar scratching, and twisted story time rambling.Now this is starting to sound like the Pheromoans I know.The speedy thump of the kick drum, although purposely staggering off tempo at times, is the only thing keeping this song from completely falling apart, and that's just how they like it."Light Blue Faces" is one of the more tame and functional pieces of music on this record, with a sharp, fuzzed-out blues riff and hip-shaking tambourine that rattles somewhere off in the distance.This sounds kind of like Door and the Window trying to pull off a scrapped Byrds tune.Walker's tone-deaf rants bring to mind images of Johnny Depp as crown king of a blue-faced alien culture, and other strangeness.As the album pulls you in every direction imaginable, these boys run through a handful of weird vibes and topsy turvy genre-bending.They even manage to dabble in a bit of grunged-out heaviness, with the slow and unsettling crunch of "S.B.'s/Greece Theme".The lengthy album closer, and the creepiest of the bunch, "Conviction St. 1 & 2" is an uneasy tune, with lurker violins and half sung/half spoken downer vocal passages, teetering on a thin line between hope and hopeless.They take full advantage of the open spaces that they create, and there are plenty of them.You can feel that things are coming to end from the very first note, and things begin to sink.This record is full of fresh ideas, slightly humorous and blatantly risky moves, they never seem to stick any single theme, twisting all things familiar and safe about rock and roll.If you like your punk boundary-free, you will want to pick this up as soon as possible.Look for a new LP on Red Lounge sooner than later.