Terrorbird Media

MP3s: “We Fish” & “5-7-10 Split” via Stereogum

This week legendary noisy guitar stranglers Trumans Water return to the fold with an amazing new album showing the band hasn’t lost a step in their 7 year hiatus. Their 13th release in their 19 year existence, O Zeta Zunis finds the band as skronkily uncompromising still but the album is very direct and even catchy. To celebrate the new record, Trumans Water has some very rare stateside live engagements. Don’t miss if you are in the area!

Aug 24: Portland, OR – East End
Aug 25: Bellingham, WA – Cabin Tavern
Aug 26: Seattle, WA – Funhouse

Stay tuned for when Asthmatic Kitty re-releases much of their hard-to-find catalog this November.

“It’d be swell if a few of those sockless kids who’ve formed Pavementy, willfully lo-fi bands in the last year or two skronked themselves up in this manner and stopped writing songs about going to the beach.” Drowned In Sound

“None of their original fire and intensity has waned over the years” Line Of Best Fit

Ah, America — she loves a comeback, she does. Even the hint of its possibility tantalizes. Plays so well in Peoria (and elsewhere). Is it part of the USA’s national character to welcome back its own to any notable prominence, to celebrate a reclamation earned through reassertion, revivifying accomplishment — or retrospective reassessment?

Trumans Water never really went away. Scarce in their native land, yes — that, indeed, the veteran American “spazz-rock”/”squiggle-core” group has been in recent years. (Increasingly more obscure as well, relatively unknown to untold pods of younger blog-rockin’ folk — sharp-eared discerners, who might well luv TW were they to know TW — if still deemed “legendary” by those who, a) remember Trumans’ halcyon days in America’s early/mid-’90s “guitar-rock” underground; b) recall the life-altering praise from abroad, with the late great all-time tip-top good-taste-making radio DJ John Peel championing them over international airwaves, and the Melody Maker making this pithy 1993 assessment: “Sonic freaks with a lust for life, Trumans Water make Pavement sound like U2.” Hear, hear? Not bad — but your call.)

For over a dozen years, the Water’s arguably been more of a foreign affair, with releases on European labels, touring almost exclusively “over there” yet consistently recording stateside. But enough with the history (for now). Because the rock o’ Trumans Water lives in the present. Their new album O Zeta Zunis sounds remarkably fresh if also in keeping with a fistful of enduring collective aesthetic TW identities: the ever-active, wildly clawing, rough-toned brace of guitars; the sour-sweet sing-shout screech-croon ‘n’ power-yowl; the explosive rhythms, herking here and jerking there, none too predictable anywhere.

O Zeta Zunis may be Trumans Water’s studio album-proper #13 — or not, if ya count such various full-length Trumans cassette releases as Couch of the Spastics on Chocolate Monk or Cough Forth Such Dilemmas on Union Pole. Whatev. It certainly is their first new album since 2003 and, so importantly, it is coming out in these United States (and elsewhere) on Asthmatic Kitty Records. (The label will offer quality downloads; the band will put out a limited number of vinyl copies on their Justice My Eye/Elevated Loin imprint.) AKR will be their first truly stable domestic label home of the new millennium. (What’s more, Asthmatic Kitty is planning to catch up any interested parties in coming months by digitally re-releasing elusive albums of the Trumans Water discography.).

O Zeta Zunis is a cohesive foursome ripping confidently, a few slowed-up passages helping to accentuate the melodic riff-drive of “Last Time” or the balls-out whizz-bang of “Greased Water,” the twitchy-catchy frolic of “5-7-10 Split” or the rubbery buzz-chug of “You Live Out Loud.” Nice. There’re loping jams and snappy sputter-blasts as well. Essence of Trumans. And, as detailed, O Zeta Zunis brings the Water back to the United States — in some literal ways that’ve not been seen in over a dozen years. (Along with playing Europe, TW plan to do some actual North American touring to support this/other Asthmatic Kitty product.) Yeah, Trumans Water — those friendly fellows are of the world but they’re America’s and they never left so won’t you please welcome them back?

Liner notes after the jump
Read the rest of this entry »