A vicious, alluring listen from the north country

David Knowles Public Relations Manager

Imagine you are sitting in your room (maybe you are) and reading this article. Now take that coffee mug on your desk and knock it on the floor. That's sort of what it’s like to listen to AIDS Wolf. Now imagine that you are sitting in your parked car. You reverse and knock over the fire hydrant that's behind you; you pull forward and rear-end the car in front of you. That’s a little bit more like listening to AIDS Wolf. Now take that same car, put a cinderblock on the accelerator, and run it into a ravine. You’re getting closer.

Okay, now let’s imagine you’re down at the train tracks with a band saw. You do the dirty work and stand back and wait. Pretty soon you hear a whistle and see a train coming down the tracks. Maybe it tries to brake, maybe it doesn’t. In any case, you look on as car after car launches through the air, piling up on top of each other in a screeching inferno of fire and twisted metal. That’s what its like to listen to AIDS Wolf.

Like a train wreck, or an exploding fireworks factory, or perhaps the Hindenburg, the debut album from Montreal’s much hyped AIDS Wolf is a truly abrasive experience. But there’s something fascinating about destruction. There’s a reason that video footage of the southeast Asian tsunami spread like wildfire over the Internet in the days after the event and everyone has heard the anecdote of witnesses to a car crash who can’t stop looking.

Their Lovvers LP, which was released in January by the Vassar student label Lovepump United, is, in fact, a terrible listen. It’s noisy, grating and inaccessible. I love it, but you probably won’t. In any case, a little about the music: the dueling guitars sound like primitive versions of Television riffs and are pushed to the front of the mix.

I can’t understand a word that the lead singer Chloe is saying and there are a couple points where it sounds like she’s singing while riding a jackhammer. The drums could be louder. To sum up: you should check out this record, because it just might be one of those things that you think you’ll hate but you end up loving. And that’s a satisfying discovery.

Also, the song “Panty Mind” should be the new Canadian national anthem.