Brave Noise & Burning In Water

They Say...

Review by Bill Janovitz, All Music Guide

When Boston legends Moving Targets released their second album, the Brave Noise LP, on Taang! on CD, it was 1988 and still the early days of the digital format. Indie labels were among the first to package older albums and material with newer stuff as an incentive for the thrifty younger audience to spend the extra dollars for the CD version. Listening years afterward, one is struck by how well the whole Targets collection still holds together: the influential songwriting, musicianship, and above all Lou Giordano's production (with the up-and-coming Carl Plaster assisting). And while Brave Noise is a worthy follow-up to Burning in Water, the listener is also struck by just how much stronger and more consistent the debut album was. To be fair, Burning in Water exploded with a rare sense of urgency that was hard to top. Moving Targets was a band who never got their due and remained largely unacknowledged -- even in Boston years down the line -- for their important contributions as a post-punk and pre-grunge link. Like their far better-known (and yet somehow still not recognized proportionally to their level of impact) colleagues Hüsker Dü, Moving Targets combined the ferocious spirit, energy, and alienated lyrics of hardcore with traditional rock & roll and pop songcraft. Hüsker Dü was clearly an influence on Moving Targets, but the former's New Day Rising and Burning in Water were both released in 1986 and both embraced many of the same ideas. While Hüsker Dü was actually winding it down a bit, tempering their ultra-hardcore pedigree with a bit of their love of melody and folky progressions, Moving Targets here sound like a trio of guys playing as if this might be their last opportunity to record. While their pop sense is clear to hear, they rarely let up the aggressive attack. The imposing powerhouse drummer Pat Brady is particularly unrelenting; he fits an impossible amount of beats, rolls, and fills into tight spaces, remaining musical, swinging, and relatively steady, even while taking pinpoint turns in tempo. While the on-a-dime tempo changes continue on Brave Noise, the breakneck pace and attack have decidedly ebbed. He seems to have been reigned in -- or just a little tired. What listeners hear is the predictable maturing of a band two years after their debut LP doing a fine job of battling the sophomore slump. Bassist Pat Leonard has been replaced by Chuck Freeman, who makes significant vocal and instrumental contributions. On songs like "Carcrash," his backing vocals are far more pronounced and well-conceived than the seeming afterthoughts of lead singer Kenny Chambers' own voice-on-voice overdubs on Burning in Water. And on other songs, such as "Separate Hearts," Freeman's basslines take center stage, modulating with chorus and flanging effects in Cure-like intros and breaks. Chambers' guitars are still there, but at times his satisfyingly one-dimensional Angus Young/Pete Townsend/Ramones power chords of yore are offset by acoustic, clean electric, chorused, and backwards-tracked parts. Giordano opens up the band's sound to other possibilities on the record. He might have been encouraged by Chambers spreading his wings as a songwriter or vice-versa. Chambers still had one foot in his Boston's hardcore-scene upbringing, but more attention is spent on the melodic and layered side of pop and classic rock songwriting. The remaining nods to punk come in the eschewing of endless guitar soloing -- even when the timing seems to be begging for it (and he was fully capable of torrid leads, as heard in his contributions to the band Bullet Lavolta) -- and in the shorter bursts of rage and bombast than the extended anthems of Burning in Water. Still, the packaging of the two LPs together points more to the shortcomings of the more ambitious but far less urgent or satisfying follow-up. But it is great to have both on one disc.