Stutter

by Dean CarlsonMore of a manic fever rant than an album, Stutter is so grotesque and spasmodic that it rams you into a corner until you can do nothing but choke down its home-brewed indie-guitar arsenic. Thin, spiky, jagged folk music. Songs constructed like the Fire Engines having a few beers with Patti Smith as C.S. Lewis is screaming obscenities at small children. What's really at stake here is not the band's first attempts of Next Big Thing potential, but rather an extraordinary disaster of disagreement. As if a lunatic in his own home-built asylum, Tim Booth is a mere bystander to his wild vocals while the rest of the band watch Gavan Whelan have an absolute fit on -- what sounds like -- four drum kits at once. This is shoddy, shameless chaos. Nothing more than a terribly produced mess of tragic rock-star baiting and deliberate discordance. An amazing debut.