The term "noise-pop" is getting thrown around a lot nowadays-- look, if all it takes is three chords, distortion and production on the cheap to give it an off-the-cuff garage sense of authenticity, the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" is noise-pop. Last time I checked, that was called "rock." If you're going to call it noise-pop, it should have both melody and dissonance in equal measure.
Balkans are a prime example of this dichotomy. Great melodic songwriting? Listen to the irresistible "Dressed in Black" and just try to get the song's chorus out of your head. Angular post-punk dissonance? Cue up "Violent Girls", and marvel at how the opening chiming guitar figure, catchy as it is, gets mangled by both guitarists a mere ten seconds later; even more unexpected is the cow-punk breakdown one minute in-- it's a pop tune by way of John Zorn.
Balkans also have something that's seems a rarity nowadays: a great singer. David Byrne once noted that "The better the singer's voice is, the harder it is to believe what they're saying." There may be some truth to that, but sometimes I want someone who could make the phone book sound great. Frankie Broyles is just such a singer, blessed with a voice somewhere in between the disaffected delivery of Julian Casablancas and the earnest wail of Hamilton Leithauser. His remarkable ability to vacillate between half-drunken swagger and wide-eyed terror keeps the songs from becoming either too hipster-jaded or sentimentally schmaltzy.
Top it all off with the maturity and judgment to give you just enough, but not too much. Clocking in at a slim 32 minutes, their self-titled debut is just long enough to appreciate its tunefulness and density without overstaying its welcome. It's both noise and pop in equal measure, definitively.
[Balkans Website]
[Stream Balkans on Soundcloud/Buy Balkans from Double Phantom Records]
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