Sonically Produced Chaos
When one finally hears about a band, who’s been around since 1996, one expects them to be broken up. Not the case with Twinkie. This English band plays an aggressive style of indie-rock in the vein of the Pixies and Sonic Youth. Their self-titled album starts out with the aptly titled “Hi Lo Medium”, which describes the song perfectly in terms of tempo. A purely instrumental track, except for yelling and screaming, it serves as a good precursor for the rest of the disc. As “Mr. Pierre” kicks in, the listener is sucked into a chaotic symphony, which is accented with eclectic male vocals and female backup vocals.
Each song follows a good recipe of switching between mellow rock and cacophony. The guitar adds nice fuzz on every track, giving the album an early 90’s nostalgic feel. At times, the music is reminiscent of more recent groups such as The Red Light Sting, ensuring that Twinkie doesn’t sound too dated. Tracks like “Crime” are very abstract, in stark contrast to more straight up indie-rock songs like “Chaff the Queen”, show a large range of musical influences.
The only problem with this is that the tracks start to mush together, without any real beginning or end. In some ways, however, that really works for them, making it a disc one listens to completely, not just a track here or there.
Sonic Youth fans will feel right at home with Twinkie, as will the younger indie/art rock music fans of today. While maybe not as original as some groups out there, Twinkie does enough right to make their album worth more than a single listen.
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