The nonconformity of punk music has been at the core of NYC trio The Sediment Club since their inception TEN years ago. Every note, beat, syllable uttered, has sprinted in the opposite direction of compositional and anthemic consonance, forcing their audience either to leave their preconceptions at the door, or to leave the room. This Friday will see the release of their new LP, Stucco Thieves, via Wharf Cat Records. Its nine songs teeter between curious befuddlement and spirited rage, perhaps never fully entering one or the other. The result is a less than comfortable listen, anxiety-ridden and agitated, but alluring nonetheless. Their first single, “”The Payoff” is an ever-growing snowball of a song, at first rolling smoothly down a freshly powdered mountainside, and then tumbling violently as it hardens and reaches more jagged terrain. A deceitful congeniality is molded by Lazar Bozic’s catchy bass and Jackie McDermott’s chugging drums—deceitful because of Austin Julian’s guitar peppering anxiety over the inexplicable quickening of tempo. And then it breaks into something else entirely. An irregular facade is revealed, splattered by jittery anti-melody and heaving shouts atop a now tumbling pulse.
The new single, “Hydraulic Saint” speaks for the entire album, its opening line appropriately demanding, “Someone tell me what the hell has gone wrong!” Sweeping basslines and hellish guitar stabs race over an unstoppable drumbeat. It behaves as horrifically as the car wreck that’s sampled to set the whole thing into motion. If you take anything away from listening to any or all of these songs, or seeing a performance, it’s this: This is not a band that cares about your good feeling, man.
