Daughter
Skin
Aum Fidelity
I take it all back. In the past, I was relatively critical of Aum Fidelity for suffering from genre tunnel-vision in their consistent release schedule of emotive, somewhat subdued free jazz albums. Most of these albums are, in fact, very good at what they set out to be. The point being, the new Aum Fidelity release is not free jazz, it’s old school-styled punk. From the first couple of tracks, a cynical critic might ask whether or not Aum has ran out of stale jazz music to rehash, and now has to turn to stale punk. An even more cynical critic might ask whether or not Daughter is the actual familial tie between the singer from this band and the head of the Aum Fidelity label.
I wouldn’t say those things, though. I think “Packin’” is a tight track. Daughter’s Skin is a nice record. There are some easy comparisons to be made to the early Beastie Boys career – you know, Stooges rock, rap about weed, jesting, bravado, some engaging experimentation here and there. You throw in some teenage Kathleen Hanna antagonistic feminism, and you’ve got Skin.
It’s solid rock music. Except for the inane lecture on the last track, where you can actually hear the inane lyrics over some slightly noisy crackling. For the tracks where you just hear screaming, the lyrics are reprinted in the booklet. If you buy the album, don’t read them. Personally, I don’t really respond to this kind of bravado. At least a gigantic asshole like Vincent Gallo has the tact not to sing songs about Chloe Sevigny blowing him. Something about beautiful people boasting about their assets always turns me off.
Which leads to the important fact that Daughter’s other project, Spalding Rockwell, has an Electro-clash album coming out later this year. I’ll stick to Daniel Carter.
Aum Fidelity: http://www.aumfidelity.com/
