Death Tape [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. Historically, rock music has often been thought of as an exception to art - as if it's status as non-painting makes it ordinary - and occasionally still, rock `n' roll is viewed as the work of aberrant groups of aggressive men. But Bombay Beach turns out to be what contemporary art has become: genre mixing, non-solipsistic, and in many ways free. The band calls this the time of a "New American Rage," and they're turning to creative mythology and artistic community to repurpose it. The Death Tape rage has a certain level-headedness behind it, and it comes through in a way that best befits change: in collective raucous fun, beauty in the atonal, and spontaneity that signify the subversion of the everyday story. Many of the sounds and lyrics here are in service of a bigger narrative the band is currently working up for a film.