He's Got The Whole This Land Is Your Land In His Hands

The first widely released record in nearly six years by this genre-indifferent, joyfully obtuse Chicago project headed by emo legend Tim Kinsella (Cap’n Jazz, Owls, brother of American Football’s Mike Kinsella, no known relation to Sophie Kinsella). Here, the five-piece band hit record, jammed for hours on end, pulled out the sections they liked, and cut them into songs. The result is a record that grooves surprisingly hard. It’s reminiscent of the milieu Joan of Arc came from: the Chicago of the late ‘90s/early 00’s populated by Tortoise, Jim O’Rourke, Red Red Meat/Califone, and so many other bands that wanted to find the weirdest way possible to swing. (This also reminds me of early His Name is Alive at their noisiest.) When I saw them live, bandmember Melina Ausikaitis played a fretless, stringless guitar. Joan of Arc: gotta love ‘em. Bad words on: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10. Favorites that don’t have bad words: 4, 6, 7.

1. (2:54)—FCC (f*** multiple times). Grinding noise, glittery synths.
2. (3:41)—FCC, for a hard-to-forget line involving pizza.
3. (4:38)—FCC (f***). Great, loping, low-key.
4. *(4:46)—Slow, busy, hypnotic. Scrawls of noise, funky bass, lots of piano, occasional accordion. “C-H-I-C-U-G-O.”
5. (2:46)—FCC (f***, s***). Slow, chugging, chintzy beat and reverberant piano.
6. *(3:47)—Sliding, kind of krauty drum beat. Weirdly beautiful and heavy.
7. *(3:40)—Similar beat and sounds as the last track, but peppier; sounds like it was cut from the same jam. “Upon entry to our friendship you’re consenting to be photographed.”
8. (2:52)—FCC (s***). Mid-tempo march beat, propulsive.
9. (2:38)—Slow, squelchy. “I’m Phil Collins. I drum and I sing, even if my arms are tired.”
10. (3:51)—FCC (t***) Mid-tempo, four-on-the-floor, noisy and dizzy. “I found the king’s hands tiny and sans redeeming qualities.”
11. (4:00)—Slow. Spoken word over a wall of noise. Turns into a junkyard post-punk groove for the last minute.