Enon, Grass Geysers…Carbon Clouds
Indie trio strips down, gets results-oriented.
Like hotel lobbies and penis extension spams, opening tracks are potential hotbeds of deception. It's a pity more bands don't seize the opportunity with Enon's nonchalance. "Mirror on You" finds the indie rock role models brainpan-deep in an even more refined version of the era-corrected garage rock they perfected well before their second album, 2002's High Society. But, for all its jittery passion, "Mirror on You" is a ruse, the only song of its kind on the album.
Not that the Brooklyn-based trio's fourth studio album has much in common with their previous album, 2003's relatively relaxed Hocus Pocus, either: The latter was about experimentation while Grass Geysers…Carbon Clouds is about results. Guitar-dominant and high in bpms, the album stays consistently taut, even when the band slows to mid-tempo, as on "Pigeneration." "You cannot compete/ Not ever," bassist and vocalist Toko Yasuda warbles defiantly over Matt Schultz's syncopated snare-enhanced, four-on-the-floor beat and John Schmersal's Andy-Gill-update guitar, "You are not complete."
In lesser hands, the song might come off as mere, late-in-the-latter-day dance-punk. But Enon have never been more in control of their material: the band's command of color and impeccably economical playing pretty much annihilate genre considerations completely. Better still, Yasuda has never been more of a sex bomb.
