Four people can make more noise than three, and that's a concise explanation of the challenge that
Nots faced while making their third album.
Nots were a quartet on their first two albums, 2014's
We Are Nots and 2016's
Cosmetic, but after keyboard player
Alexandra Eastburn dropped out of the lineup, guitarist and vocalist
Natalie Hoffmann, bassist
Meredith Lones, and drummer
Charlotte Watson opted not to replace her.
Nots' 2019 album
3 sounds leaner and less aggressively dissonant than their earlier work, but it sure doesn't feel like they've tamed themselves. If anything,
Hoffman's guitar work is harder and more primal here, as if she's hoping to compensate for the absent screech of
Eastburn's keys, and the clouds of electronic noise and billows of feedback that float through the songs confirm that this band's commitment to skronk remains strong. Though
Hoffman's vocals still hover somewhere between petulance and boredom, this time out she puts a force and bite into her delivery that brings the material across with greater impact. And
Meredith Lones and
Charlotte Watson are an impressively powerful rhythm section, with the unrelenting pulse of
Lones' bass and the metronomic crack of
Watson's drums adding energy and texture as well as a solid foundation for the melodies.
Nots like to describe themselves as a "weird punk" band, and the key to
3 is that the group might be less noisy, but ultimately they're no less weird, and if the album sounds like they're still making sense of their new configuration, their eyes are still on the buzzy prize, and this is a great, challenging, off-center rock album.