Abe Vigoda
Abe Vigoda
Although albums are born and bound by them, it's never easy to find a record's core in just one specific moment. But in the very first second of Skeleton's very first song, "Dead City/Waste Wilderness", all four dudes slam their individual notes into the ropes at once, and from there, everything follows some kind of frenetic punk ballet in which those moving musical parts are hopelessly trying to find their way back to their feet. Somewhere in that fraction of a second, a safe is blown wide, wide open, and its contents are pretty gnarly.
Hailing from Chino but now residing in Los Angeles, the four men of Abe Vigoda have become fixtures and disciples of that city's Smell scene, younger vibe brothers to flag-carriers No Age, HEALTH, and Mika Miko. And while those bands have begun enjoying an impact farther outside the empty of downtown L.A., Abe Vigoda sound ready to be heard everywhere all at once.
The band's debut, Kid City, was reason enough to take notice, but too raw and abrasive at times to allow its more digestible parts to be, well, digested. Skeleton finds the band expanding on and beautifying a sound very much their own: lush, tropical punk that's swallowed as many strains of sound as the images it conjures. Starting with the initial transition between the album's breakneck opener and the centipede guitar parts of "Bear Face", there's little in the way of slowing down. Songs clock in anywhere between 90 seconds and three minutes, but each is fully realized-- and with the exception of the title track, well-sequenced. While the first jabs of the "The Garden" offer a relative respite from the workout, the LP quickly reverts with highlight (and should-be closer) "Endless Sleeper", which shows a band just as capable of slowing down and pacing themselves as they are at exploding.
Guitarists Michael Vidal and Juan Velazquez braid stabbing guitar parts that mirror both the warmth and romance of steel drum and South American six-string traditions, but retain a rapier's point throughout. Any clear tendency to bend towards more sun-stroked vibes is hammered all the way home by not-so-secret weapon Reggie Guerrero, whose stickwork dances with but never overwhelms his bandmates' guitars.
Skeleton's flaws are few and often obscured by the album's mixing: Vidal's vocal adds an additional rhythmic layer, but his lyrical work is interesting enough to be more pronounced and less muddied. That said, Skeleton's manic pacing may prove exhausting-- its rapid-fire songs sometimes feel more like fragments blurred together by hypnotic drumwork and tactile soundscaping. It should take a long time to discover yourself and your sound somewhere within 40 years of pop music, but Abe Vigoda seem to have found their noise some other way. Every triumph and every misstep of Skeleton feels as if it grew organically, removed from the discussion of genre tags, written manifestos, or aural history projects. Some kids want to make loud noises because it's fun. There are too many of those to count in Skeleton.