Eleven minutes and an overload of ideas – and yet, whilst listening, one is left with the feeling of only grasping fragments of what these ten songs have to offer. Magazine, the second album by the experimental rock band YHWH Nailgun from Philadelphia, is even more condensed and also feels more immediate than their debut 45 Pounds – which, after all, was twice as long.
As ever, the four-piece band blends math rock and a punky DIY vibe with a free jazz aesthetic. In doing so, a great many disparate elements clash, even though none of the tracks is longer than 1 minute 20 seconds. Nevertheless, the band finds room for playfulness. Take ‘Sewer Tree’, for example: the almost sublime, catchy melodic line quotes the famous motif from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’ and rubs up against the track’s raw, industrial sound in a productive way. Other songs, such as the frantically stumbling ‘Magazine’ – which lasts just 35 seconds – end abruptly, by contrast. ‘Innocent Sigh’, carried by dubby reverb, comes across as comparatively relaxed. However short Magazine may be, the record does not feel like a series of sketches, but rather astonishingly assured.
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