The Weird Weeds I Miss This

It seems to me that the Weird Weeds have made, by intent or by accident, an intriguing late-night record.  Late-night records aren’t necessarily quieter than their daytime counterparts, but usually they have a “don’t wake the neighbors” tentativeness that makes them conducive to the witching hours.  Also, and this is crucial, the good ones have an air of mystery about them, like something out of a dream or a nightmare that the sleepless mind is vulnerable to.  Listen to a song like A Goose and you’ll know what I mean.  The Weird Weeds don’t shy away from the dissonances; they positively revel in them, like something off of Tim Buckley’s Starsailor, but a lot less in your face.   You can tell the band is resolute in doing things their own way, as discordant songs are followed by plaintive melodies, reinforcing the feeling of the ground shifting under your feet the way the plotline of your dreams changes radically and with no explanation or forewarning. 

Because I Miss This is so quiet for most of its duration, it’s easy to miss all this.  But leave it on and let it seep in and you’re part of their world.  The band is a 3 piece, with one female and two male members (wait, that didn’t come out right), all contributing vocals and sparse instrumentation, but producing a wide variety of textures.  By holding back on so many songs, they risk losing people and sometimes the sleepy quality of songs like Sound Fills Your Dreams followed by the closer Nothing makes them less than compelling, so that something ephemeral starts to disappear.  But for the most part the mood is sustained wonderfully and this is helped by their savvy penchant for getting out of a song while they’re ahead.  For instance, the opener is a minute long, which is just long enough to prevent its charm from becoming cutesy.  This is followed by a similarly brusk instrumental called Save the Dogs.  Bands have mostly forgotten the true value of being succinct and when I look on the back of a record and see track lengths like 5:45 and 6:31 strewn about I let out a sigh of exasperation.  A good idea can take you through 1 or 2 minutes; a great idea can last a little longer, but you’ve really gotta be doing something special to make stuff interesting for 5 or more minutes, and few are up to the challenge.  The smart ones realize this.  The centerpiece of this record, Red, goes through at least 4 distinct but related changes in just over 2 minutes, and I say “Bravo!”   

All I know is it’s refreshing to here an interesting new band avoiding the whole tired dance-punk aesthetic that XTC perfected 30 years ago anyway.  This is a low-key release that probably slipped by a lot of people last year and I’m here to tell you to go back and seek it out.  Buy it for the night you get back at 2:30 after striking out at the bar, and its delightful, unassuming eccentricity will take you away from this ugly world for spell.