Reviews

Basement Arms

City Trash

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Review Date: 2007-05-10

Listening to the Basement Arms is very much a microcosm of what it is like to listen to the vast majority of up-and-coming indie acts in a city like Toronto. City Trash is a self-released album, free of all the meddling that sometimes happens once you get on a label, and this has both positives and negatives that go along with it.

There is a certain level of exhilaration that comes with listening to a band like Basement Arms flying without a parachute, making decisions without that voice on their collective shoulder suggesting it might be just a smidge too ambitious. In that sense, an unadulterated, raw recording like this is awesome. On the other hand, after those first few listens, the chinks in City Trash’s armour start to appear, and like it or not that voice on the shoulder tends to be damn good at covering those up.

Lead singer Dwight Schenk has a voice that -- not surprisingly -- has drawn comparisons to Tom Waits. I second or third that motion, but only as far as tone, because the songs themselves for the most part are not very much at all like Tom Waits songs. Take the opening song on the EP “shine of her moon.” Think Tom Waits singing over a punk/swinged-up Morphine song and you might be on the right track. I wouldn’t call any of this typical punk, but with all the energy involved that is the genre I am going to file Basement Arms under. Perhaps if you want to be more specific jazzy/folk/punk just to avoid ruffling any feathers. Jay Baird isn’t one of the four bands members but he is the one doing an amazing job on sax here, so I must mention his name.

We could spend a long time trying to classify these songs, but why bother? One song we won’t fight about is “Muppet’s Revenge”, a non-stop. raucous frantic punk song that demands you to dance around. Maybe I just hear things because of the word “muppet” but this song sounds just like what you might imagine the old school Muppets would have sounded like if they suddenly lost their mind and made a punk song including trumpets and sax, and the drum roll is exactly the drum roll from old school Muppets. It is just so fun singing along with the gibberish vocals that Schenk sings during the chorus. This will make it on my year end album, write that down.

“Over 50,000 Entries” has a rugged yet quiet intensity to it. The song opens up with Schenk lamenting the inability of knowing all 50,000 entries in Webster’s dictionary with nothing but guitar and chugs along building up and adding instruments like fiddle, bass and kalimba as it moves forward. Perhaps nobody can know all 50,000 entries in the dictionary but if anybody could it’s my girlfriend.

I’m pretty sure a label would have kyboshed the concept of including a playful punked up rendition of a Muppet’s song, and that would have been one of those negatives. But that same label might have suggested ending the EP off with with a rambling nine minute “the band just kept playing on” was not the way to go. Cup half empty, cup half full? I’ll leave that for you to decide; my point is just that either way it’s not all great. I don’t hate this song, I assume the Basement Arms close with it at their sets and it’s probably quite a hit hearing the band come up with one epic last song before they walk off stage. It doesn’t have that effect on record though, even if James Mckie plays a mean fiddle.

Recording without a safety net might not be all peaches and cream, but on the whole City Trash has more than enough to make The Basement Arms a band you should be checking out. And don’t worry, if you live in Toronto you will get a chance. These guys play a prolific schedule; check their MySpace for details.

Score: 6.7

- Dan