You feel GACK vs. Beard Closet in your guts. Not intestine-derived, it’s a physiological experience rattling the bits keeping you alive. Cold sweat breaks out, you’re sitting on the heavy machinery in the garage downstairs. It’s not industrial, the pieces don’t interlock, a factory isn’t in unison. The rite is harsh, but in a rugged approximation of something totemic.

The guitar dreams its way to a hypnotic melody between the full spectrum of noise, finding an amniotic wave. GACK grabs a thin microphone, alienating without the bulb of an SM58, and he screams, lost in the white noise. The piece is slow twists and evolving screeches instead of precise punches. Tinnitus replaces the set and everyone stirs from their trance, digestive tracts clenched.

A shell of style and attitude, marketable and partially pharmacological in construction obscures any ideology or ideas guiding Castle If. A beat is prerequisite, then elementary French drowning in reverb and apathy, sometimes the audience sitting around cross-sections of trees reacting to her helplessness as nothing happens. The set looks expensive, but sounds preset. The synth twinkling would only lose fidelity on a 20 year old Casio with sustain on high.

The songs ramble, stumbling onto an interesting sound, or an October motif. Being generous, it evokes Alan Vega and Martin Rev’s 1980 album, but it’s not stimulating, it’s vapid without being primitive, package it with a photo and sell it.

Normalcy infringes into terrifying territories, marching to a wedding drum machine, the opening chord’s interpretation sounds familiar to AM listeners. Melodramatic without glamour, gritty and confrontational through superficial adherence to convention. It would be more comfortable if she played with a slide, but instead we get blues and banal intensity, vocals staggering back and forth from conversational to horrific shrieks. I still can’t endorse this, but merit is there. As a two-piece the humour and the dynamic of deranged ennui is easy to see, “I know we all hate our moms.” Revenge Pregnancy*

I’ve never seen a band care less about musical notes than Aunty Panty. They’re an atonal bludgeon in swimwear and black eyes. They’re mad as fuck, they trade instruments too often, but you forgive them because it sounds good in either configuration. In the space between sounds you wonder if the racket is the least important thing. It’s something to be endured, but that doesn’t make it bad.

*Previously reviewed as a solo act under the name Satin Warship

Aunty Panty, Revenge Pregnancy, Castle If, and GACK vs. Beard Closet at Placebo, September 30, 2011