Street Horrrsing by Fuck Buttons
reviewed by: Roger Shaw '08
Noise is pretty much the undisputed ‘big thing’ right now. Artists everywhere seem to be reacting to the wave of too-clean pop that dominated the indie world for a number of years, like The Shins or Sufjan Stevens or whatever. Within this noise wave however, there hasn’t been anybody like Fuck Buttons who’ve actively sought to create ‘beautiful’ noise. It’s not that other noisy bands are making ‘ugly’ noise, it’s just that the beauty of that music often comes from the tension of external sounds fighting through the noise to emerge, rather than from the noise itself. Fuck Buttons, on the other hand, seem to see noise as something that can be beautiful in and of itself, without requiring other sounds to fight through. Noise isn’t a constructed barrier for them, it’s an instrument of equal importance to the synths and vocals that ride alongside. And, best of all, it works amazingly well. Somehow, songs like ‘Bright Tomorrow’ manage to be both noisy and ethereal simultaneously, and I think that’s what separates this band from everything else out there right now.
play: High