The Prids
Chronosynclastic
Velvet Blue Music
Once we’ve finally accelerated far enough and fast enough to break though the bow shock of punk, are we safe in tossing all the shattered musical styles derived from it into one big heap? And if we did, would record collectors still dig through it? I suppose they would, but it’s time for the rest of us to devolve a bit more and appreciate groups like the Prids. They’re making sounds with morosely skipping beats, semi-sad lyrics, and a mixture of upbeat and downer sounds that feels like too much Pepsi mixed with some old school antihistamines. Titles are short, pointed, and not terribly cheery: “Break,” “Fragile,” and “Desolate” carry the feeling forward, and even the multi-word names emote emo melancholy like a teenager’s poetry. “Tonight, October” has deeply harmonic vocals slowly dreaming their life away over an acoustic guitar and what might be a bass uke in the shadows. Even the cover of this disc is sort of sad – a scratched and faded photo that looks like your mom, back in the days long ago when she was still pretty hot. There’s a quote inside the sleeve, and I’ll claim fair use for printing it because it sets the tone as clearly as anything I might imagine: “How nice to feel nothing and still get full credit for being alive.” That’s either existentialism or nihilism, but I always get those two confused.
Velvet Blue Music: http://Velvetbluemusic.com • The Prids: http://www.theprids.com
