Chris Rehm--who's debut EP Salivary Stones I had the pleasure of reviewing some months back--is one multi-talented dude. And what a range: Caddywhompus, his band with drummer Sean Hart, is as raucous and unbridled as his previous album was insular and contemplative. It also has something that I think is often undervalued in music: raw enthusiasm. Even if you only enjoy Remainder half as much as they seem to be having playing it, it's still likely to become a candidate for heavy rotation.
Caddywhompus is as oblique as their name suggests: not a single song on Remainder follows a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure, and the songs all expand and contract in timbre and tempo in unexpected ways. Perhaps the most exciting thing on display here was something that Rehm only hinted at on his EP: melody. Despite the lack of familiar song structures, every song here has a hook, if not several, vocal or otherwise. Rehm's voice, barely audible throughout his mostly instrumental solo disc is pushed to the forefront, and reminds me of rangy upper end of another prog-leaning guitarist, Built to Spill's Doug Martsch. Like Martsch, Rehm goes for the majestic, and rarely comes up short--opener "Let the Water Hit the Floor" features a competition between the instruments and Rehm's voice, each pushing the other to higher and higher reaches. In fact, it's this quality that suffuses the album, and many of the songs seem to surrender to near-immolation at their halfway points.
Instrumentally, this is one virtuosic duo. There's definitely a math-rock feel to many of the shifting plate tectonics of the songs, but rarely does it seem unnecessary or wankery for wankery's sake. And here again, it's enthusiasm is infectious: it sounds like two guys that really enjoy playing together, and playing off one another.
One similarity between Rehm's solo EP and Remainder is the textures--there's a lot of feedback and drones that enter into (and in some cases, take over) these songs. If I had one complaint, it's that some of these breakdowns go a bit overboard, descending from one big, pummeling coda into another even larger one. But here's where the album's suite-like structure saves it--a song's coda is lost to a squall of static, only to turn itself inside out into another song. It's a restless listen, and rarely lets up in it's relatively short but satisfying 32-minute runtime. As I wrote in my earlier review, I can't wait to see what else Rehm has in store for us. With this kind of ability and range, who knows how many bands are in there?
[Caddywhompus Myspace]
[Buy Remainder from Community Records]
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