Spray Paint

This is apparently the seventh formal album from this Austin-based “experimental/noise rock/drone supergroup” featuring members of Spray Paint, Swans, USA/Mexico, Marriage, and host of other underground luminaries, but such distinctions have become somewhat irrelevant in recent years as the tentet’s discography has quickly expanded to Sunburned Hand of the Man levels with 30+ live releases. The difference between their live and studio releases is largely academic, as both are improvised and many of their live releases have excellent quality, so the only real difference is that the live pieces often extend beyond the band’s usual 20-minute cut off. The far more salient details are the guests drawn into the band’s orbit (in this case, guitarist Wendy Eisenberg and Brazilian bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes) and how fucking locked in the band were on that particular occasion (spoiler alert: they were pretty fucking locked in for this one). Aside from that, Repair shares the additional allure of previous double LPs like Instruments and In E in that it features four fresh bangers rather than the usual one or two. In short, this one is another ripper.

Remarkably, this is the first Water Damage album that I have gotten around to writing about, as finding words that do justice to this project’s unique and monolithic brilliance is quite a tall order. The reason is that the ensemble is devoted to an extremely narrow yet endlessly fascinating niche in which they unwaveringly adhere to a mission statement of “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation.” They are also guided by a desire to always have at least two drummers and two bassists, as well as a tendency to limit each song to a single reel of tape. Those reels are sequentially numbered in the order that they were recorded and Repair is devoted to reels 38, 41, 43, and 45. 

Given the project’s shifting multiplicity of killer drummers, rhythm is eternally the driving force behind Water Damage, but nature of the groove can vary significantly from piece to piece, as the band enthusiastically draw their eclectic inspirations from pretty much every iconic drone, minimalist, or gnarly guitar noise release from the last six decades, as well as from much noisier, muscular, and more post-hardcore-themed corners of the American underground. Basically, every song begins with an insistent and unchanging beat and a droning squall of roiling heaviness then ensues for the next 20 minutes. Aside from that, Water Damage’s only other crucial defining trait is their sheer, pummeling intensity, as watching multiple drummers pound the fuck out of their kits in unison while a snarling maelstrom erupts around them can be an absolutely transcendent experience. When they are at their best, Water Damage are a singularly visceral and durational experience that has been accurately described as both “a state of mind” and a display of elemental force akin to a landslide or a volcano eruption.

That said, the character of Water Damage’s four pounding and snarling dronefests varies dramatically throughout Repair. In the opening “Reel 45,” for example, a frenzied pounding of toms gradually explodes into a relentlessly thrashing and punky double-time rave-up while Mari Maurice’s ascending violin propels the band’s roiling din to higher and higher levels of intensity. That absolutely ferocious performance is one two big surprises on the album (especially since its beat boldly tears free of the project’s sacred “minimal deviation” credo). The other one is “Reel 43,” which borrows the riff from The Stooges’ “Down On The Street” for a swaggering and thuggish new strain of Motorik repetition. While I am not sure that its sexed-up garage rock vamp quite has enough trance-inducing power to quite sustain an entire side of vinyl, I was certainly charmed that the band gleefully blindsided me with raw and sleazy dose of pugnacious proto-punk (and that Caetano Veloso’s former bassist was improbably the guy holding down the fucking groove).   

The remaining two jams fall a bit closer to expected terrain, however, which is perfectly fine by me since my love of that vision is what led me to this album in the first place. In “Reel 38,” a bouncy and shuffling mid-paced groove relentlessly burrows through a swirl of slippery, circular violin motifs and hypnotically droning and roiling guitars. My personal favorite piece is the closing “Reel 41” though, as a stomping and lurching beat viscerally propels a noisy zoner that resembles some kind of avant-garde slide guitar blues. 

That said, the only difference between a great Water Damage piece and a merely good one rarely comes down to the sort of melodies or hooks that emerge from the droning roar of the band’s arsenal of guitars, violins, synths, and electronics, as the obsessively repeating “locked groove” rhythms are always the most important ingredient. Sometimes I am instantly entranced and completely lose track of time, sometimes I just find myself distractedly nodding along—it all comes down to whether or not it feels like a groove has tapped into a pulsing cosmic vibration that the band can effortlessly ride into infinity. In that regard, “Reel 41” immediately had me air-drumming along with the crash cymbals as I was slowly engulfed by a howling cacophony that felt like a Zen-like altered state with whirling claws. In short, this is yet another great Water Damage album. I have absolutely no idea if it is any better or worse than their previous albums, as this project has been red-hot ever since it came out of the gate & their whole career is essentially endlessly variations on a single perfect theme, but I suspect most longtime fans will dig that their pummeling “locked groove” trances have now started to go feral and escape containment a bit.  

Listen here.