The words failed to leak from my brain onto the page for the first three months that the new Country Teasers releases sat on my rotation stack near my turntable. So, I started to list the reasons I hold the Teasers’ with such a high regard. First and foremost, Ben Wallers’ vocals capture the mood alteration of the music perfectly. His ability to build a barrage of rage with a robotic English attack or deliver the most cutting lines in a lax voice stretches the limitations of his dry draw. Wallers also takes time aside to delve into the cow punk depths by accentuating slow, disjointed country songs with the elongated, off-center vocals akin to a drunken cowboy singing along to Hank Williams in a Knoxville watering hole.
Wallers’ lyrics match his delivery. One minute he reveals a harsh truth then he turns around to pepper it with surreal imagery—garnering the oft-written comparison to Mark E. Smith. The lyrics also feature juvenile jokes and crass, street corner cussing seamlessly inserted between profound thoughts. This kind of playfulness prevents the band from becoming a clever version of an early ’80s anarcho-punk act.
The vehicle that drives Wallers’ vocals and lyrics—a barrage of somewhat repetitive guitar riffs that can provide a straightforward militant stomp as well as a fractured, slanted pastiche of sound— is equally impressive. At times, so much happens within a particular riff that it becomes this moving whole that, when dissected, proves to be constructed by dissimilar parts—an off-beat art rock rhythm, a few cryptic notes and, at base, an ever-slightly changing riff.
In all, the Country Teasers remain exciting from album to album because their find a lot of leeway within their basic musical strategy. They teeter on the boundary between arty and pretentious without tipping. They nod to their predecessors without derivative structuring or outright stealing. With six full-length records and a plethora of singles in their backlog, they’ve constructed a body of work that exhibits a bit of experimentation—notably on their singles and the underappreciated Full Moon Empty Sportsbag. But they’ve cooked the perfect dish—a dinner that tastes delicious and fresh with every simple twist.
But even the world’s best taco can be improved. The band could explore terrain that borders their comfort zone without ruining their basic mojo. With their split with Ezee-Tiger, the Teasers fulfill their potential and hint at a bright, exciting future for the band’s sound. On the album, we get the drab, sing-slurred twang Wallers showcased on Destroy All Human Life and the strangely disconnected guitar lines. But the addition of spiraling piano lines, bouncy/jovial rhythms and off-kilter multi tracked vocals add a dose of psychedelica to the tried and true CT sound.
With 12 songs packed onto a single side, the record carries a somewhat pessimistic message of “no future to be found” but retains a wry delivery in line to the band’s trademark sound. Variations on the no future theme permeate the record, as the band trots out molasses-paced “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” instrumentation, Eastern rhythms and inserts the sounds of various household and toy store noisemakers.
The lyrics mimic the instrumental mood, as Wallers spouts out lines like: “Don’t be fooled by the sandwich board which says: ‘It’s the end of the world. Can I borrow ten pounds?’” On “Space,” the merry-go-round piano-and-guitar spiral is driven to the rubber room with Wallers shouting “I need a pony” in the middle of a song wherein the lines “Wanting to take drugs/Needing to take drugs” make up the majority of the lyrical content.
On tunes like “Open Country,” the listener gets to eavesdrop on the band as they flesh out a tune. Wallers slows down his delivery to a depressing drone and the band hikes up and down the fretboard. Wallers lists actions he took while in the woods in a droll voice, as the band looks around their confines to find a new wall to paint. Intergalactic keyboards and dreary, wavering guitar chords are chucked into the bridge in an attempt to see if they stick.
The Rebel’s Northern Rocks Bear Weird Vegetable, which features multiple members of the Teasers, showcases the looser sketchbook feel of “Open Country.” Recorded live on WFMU, the songs on the LP possess a tight framework with enough room to feel out the lyrics that best suit each track.
The relaxed album is more straightforward than the Ezee Tiger split, with many songs exhibiting simple instrumental platforms for Wallers’ diatribes. The band snatches driving guitar lines from classic rock sources. The instrumental introduction on Northern Rocks The rhythm guitar on “Turtle v. Octopus” contains echoes of the dark, forceful power chords that underlined the Kinks’ outrage on “Rats.” Strangely, the washed-out guitar behind “Arabian Nights” alternates between the wah-soaked eeriness of Midnight Oil and the fist-pumping sanded-down sonics of Billy Idol.
But the album is not without quirks. Robert McNeill’s synthesizer lines play a more prominent role on Northern Rocks, lending an odd cosmic feel to a few songs. Oldie-but-goodie “Life is a Rehearsal” gets new life from a cartoonish, skronk-rock game of follow-the-leader.
The uniform repetition of most of the songs on Northern Rocks heightens the thrill of the bits where the band breaks out of formation. A guitar line at the end of “Civilian Life” lends urgency to the allegory of a man who gives up his vices, extending the narrative with a dazzling spiderweb of fretboard interworking.
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