Joan Of Arc
The Gap
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Joan Of Arc
The Gap
Jade Tree, 2000
RiYL: Cap'n Jazz, Gastr Del Sol, David Grubbs |
The Gastr Del Sol-loving project of former Cap'n Jazz ranter Tim Kinsella might be the most loathed band in Chicago. And after a listening to the band's new and rather spotty The Gap, it's easy to hear why. After a series of staggeringly art-damaged but not entirely awful LPs, peaking with last year's half-killer, half-filler Live In Chicago, 1999, Kinsella and company have finally fallen off the precipice.
From the opening "You [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] as (I) [You] Can," which sounds like The Velvet Underground skipping, onward, The Gap is a dreadful hail of acoustic plunking and drum and keyboard noise applied for no discernible reason.
Largely songless (a disappointment, after the last album's unexpectedly crystalline "If It Feels/Good Do It"), The Gap staggers to fill space by repeating tricks that were annoying the first time Joan Of Arc tried them. Does anyone need to hear Joan of Arc end another song in long drones while Jeremy Boyle unloads his entire stable of cheap sound effects?
Me neither!
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.