Scarling. - Sweet Heart Dealer
Review by : Shawn Delaney

Rating: 4 out of 5 Shoes

“The Heaviest in Swirl-Rock”
Mar 23, 2004

I took a try on Scarling. because I’d heard that they compare favorably to 90’s shoegaze faves Lush, as in “Lush on steroids”. I’m not sure that’s the best description of this 5-piece LA band; to me they’re more like “Babes in Toyland with guitar pedals”. One could also describe them as a more muscular version of dreampop group Alison’s Halo. Which is to say, female vocals which move from caressing to wailing, paired with dark, noisy, heavy, phasey, swirly guitars, all with a slightly gothy hue. Suffice to say Scarling. pretty much rocks the proverbial house.

I’m not familiar with singer Jessicka’s former band Jack Off Jill (is anyone?), but she, along with guitarist/musical mastermind, Christian Hejnal, make up the backbone of the group. Jessicka evidently felt it necessary to get her lyrical points across with highly bizarre song titles and vocal content, which isn’t to say that she doesn’t have a killer set of pipes, because she does…check out the terrific range of voice and emotion on album epic/centerpiece ‘Alexander the Burn Victim’ (which, incidentally sounds a lot like Velour 100 on, ahem, fire).

‘Crispin Glover’ is the best tribute to one of my favorite freakshows since the immortal Warlock Pinchers’ ‘Where the Hell is Crispin Glover?’. “Crispin Glover, save us all!” indeed. It sounds corny, but in the context it’s really freakin’ cool. Especially if you like Crispin Glover, as you all should. Both the mighty opener ‘The Last Day I Was Happy’ and ‘Black Horse Riding Star’ feature some swell face-tearing distorted bass, although there are a few too many “f you’s!” featured in the latter for my taste. Single ‘Band Aid Covers the Bullet Hole’ is a fine track, although when Jessicka sings “say hello to my little friend” I can’t help but think of Weird Al’s UHF. Ah well.

With a stingy 7 tracks and barely 30 minutes of music, it’s hard to call Sweet Heart Dealer an LP. (How about an ELP?) Some might say that Scarling. is ostensibly trying too hard (or maybe just too pretentious; check out the period at the end of their name). To those people I say, stop looking at their goofy long-haired bowl haircuts and silly makeup and just crank the album already! Even with some initial strikes against them, Scarling. puts on a hell of a beautiful racket, as well as several albums worth of great, noisy tunage.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 28th, 2004 at 7:36 pm and is filed under Shawn Delaney, Shoe's Reviews (alt/Britpop/more), Music. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.