TV Ghost
Cold Fish
die Stasi / In The Red Records
Against all odds, there is still cause to be excited when skinny, white kids with Lyle Lovette hair discover feedback.
TV Ghost’s debut full-length, Cold Fish, is a truly raw, rock & roll cataclysm that stands as quite an achievement for such a young band. These Lafayette, Indiana residents drive with a youthful discord that shrieks like a freight-train covered with aluminum foil and thumb tacks.
The closet approximation I can afford TV Ghost is that of a Monks cover band collaboration between Suicide and Drive Like Jehu, fronted, from several rooms and closed doors away, by a really high Lux Interior. Or maybe even the B-52s.
At any rate, the paranormal reference is not idle. Cold Fish, the band’s first for In The Red, might be the score of a haunted house film in which tense, string-arrangements are sacrificed for an epileptic, noise-mare that sounds like, “Oh shit.” Jackson Vanhorn and co. phrase their art punk garbage with the care of a free jazz sax-man, expertly marking the difference between urgency and novelty. From opener, “The Consumption” on, Cold Fish is every bit as dangerous and well-crafted as a catastrophic mess can be.
Expel all doubt: TV Ghost have just pissed a much-needed and epic new line in the sandbox of bratty, noise-makers.
BUY IT.
