What Dissing SOHNS Taught Me About Entertainment Crit

Around this time last year, I reviewed SOHNS' To Ward It Off And Drown It Out, a record that I had actually partly previewed at a party the previous October (in 2010). I remember the girl I was dating at the time had a migraine and SOHNS helped her headache about as much as a hammer and ice pick. It's important to note because I took the assignment in January 2011 with an impression already formed concerning the music. 

That said, nothing prepared me for the experience of listening to the record. "Are you hearing this?" I asked my (different) girlfriend. I don't remember how she responded, but I can tell you that my own reaction was purely visceral. Alex Méndez screeched like a banshee to the hardcore missile strike engineered by Wes Dunn (bass/vocals), Marcos Garza/Gossi (guitars/vocals; he goes by both surnames) and Lawrence Mercado (drums/vocals).* I read over the lyrics and hated them immediately, wishing the album's entire printing to recieve a Milli Vanilli-like steamrolling, especially as I read SOHNS' Facebook manifesto. The pride they took in a record so utterly imposing and willfully unlikeable was an affront to my sensibilities as a critic. How could they?

It was with that frame of mind that I endeavored this review, one that garnered several polarized comments (some of which I'm sure came semi-anonymously from members of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy). I proudly wrote:

Méndez’s vocals aren’t discernible unless read, and, on paper, their ambiguity is a shit-stained middle finger. To quote Jawbox, a likely forebear of SOHNS, this album is all nerve, no brain.

I knew what I was writing was provocative (which is a nice way of saying I was being a knowing asshole) and submitted it in part to prove something. I knew better than SOHNS what a good record was. Fuck these guys for spending two years on an album I couldn't stand and being proud of it. Never mind that my experience with hardcore and metal begins and ends with The Refused, Jawbox and the artier features on rock radio (Metallica, Tool, Sabbath). I wield the pen and, therefore, the authority.

It was a low-point in my short tenure as a professional entertainment critic for one reason: I developed a personal vendetta--however convoluted and self-serving--with the band. Sometimes critics circumvent the art and instead go for the artist. Pitchfork (all due respect) has developed a reputation for such reviews and the rep is neither unwarranted nor unjustified. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum and Ian Cohen can build a sterling case around persona in informing art. His reviews of recent work by DJ Shadow and Childish Gambino are authoritative studies of character. Whether you agree that the music is still good and/or bad is beside the point.

But at worst, to-the-artist examinations become my discussion of SOHNS, wherein I paint Méndez as a douchebag of songwriting complete with if-you-have-to-ask-you-just-don't-get-it subtext (the shit-stained middle finger). And that's simply not true. Revisiting the album in late summer, I found most of my criticisms of the album to hold water. I'm still not fond of the vocals' take-it-or-leave-it shrillness and still find the lyricism vague. But to pretend that SOHNS aren't masters of sonic terror is foolhardy. I still haven't heard another SA-release that is so assaulting. Recorded by Chris Common (who also worked with Mastodon), To Ward It Off And Drown It Out demands to be heard. It's loud, dynamic and positively invasive. But the record's brevity and detailed composition reveal a band willing to sacrifice length (read "awesome sauce" for many metal bands) in favor of kinetic pacing. "Battlorches" remains the album's crowning moment, where SOHN's seem to be scoring the 2012 apocalypse. In other words, To Ward It Off and Drown It Out is a record like many of its locally released brethren: prone to some indulgences with other moments of sheer exhultation. I should have written as much.

In the months following the review, I thought of Paste Magazine's 2007 record of the year: The National's Boxer. The publication revealed that their initial review of Boxer was far from mediocre (a 3 out of 5), but the album didn't provoke a My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-style slam dunk. Instead, it spent the year worming its way into the staff's heads and they found themselves in agreeance: The National had it.

All of this is a way of explaining three important things. First, visceral reactions to new art must be tempered with time, thought and a willingness to take the high road. My review trafficked in negative absolutes, which is bad territory if one thinks they might ever change their mind about something. Secondly, a critical reaction to any work must be regarded as all art: alive and perfectly capable of evolution. Knowing that my own attitude towards To Ward could change, I should have resisted certain "rhetorical flourishes." Lastly, artists are people; sometimes touchy, off-kilter, social idiots but people all the same. The sad truth about my SOHNS review is that I used to be in a band and would have been horrified to read the same words about myself. I would have much preferred something more thoughtful, substantive and certainly less personal.

I count these revelations as important lessons in my own artistic journey and I perfectly understand that chronicling them may damage my cred. A writer whose work and counsel I greatly admire once told me that writing is a priesthood, where one regards their subjects from a saintly distance in an effort to write clearly and justly. That writer (and others I'm sure), would look at revealing one's own inner workings to illustrate humanism in the craft as revealing weakness. If this is true, so be it. My subjects commit sometimes unsettlingly private things to disc, canvas, print, and celluloid. The least I can do is return the favor. 

*This article initially conflated the lineup at the time of  the album's release with the musicians responsible for recording (resulting in a minor change). I regret the error and thank vigilant readers for helping to correct.

Comments

[fuckwad666]

Luis and JC weren't on the album. Marcos Gossi was the guitarist on the album.

[MC 5hits]

I listened to Sohn's!!! The music is an explosion of sonic energy! I love it....and here is the ever present BUT...Those vocals are HORRIBLE! The Susie Talks-A-Lot doll could do a better job after you pull her string! The only attention a band like that should get, is A. The music is superior, and B. The vocals are unintelligible, screechy...and uhhh...OH YEAH...HORRIBLE!!!!