You have to admire the sheer nerve of a band like
Pampers, whose name essentially begs you to say they're full of crap, and while that aspersion doesn't really describe the way they sound, the noisy, chaotic assault of the band's self-titled debut album is about as purposefully messy as rock & roll gets.
Pampers feature a conventional two guitars/bass/drums lineup, but nearly always there seems to be something else happening below the surface, and the subsonic throb of bassist Jordan Lovelace and drummer Peter Buxton maintains a steady thud as guitarists Carl Cirone and John Kramer pour out layers of fuzz, feedback, noisy picking, and blunt slabs of sound. (Cirone also tosses in some lo-fi keyboards and tape manipulation for good measure.) Given the thick blanket of cacophony that cloaks these songs, it takes a few spins before you realize
Pampers are a pretty tight outfit. Drummer Buxton keeps
Pampers on track no matter how frantic and distorted his surroundings, and though bassist Lovelace doesn't sound like a virtuoso, he provides a solid rhythmic and melodic flooring, and nothing gets past him. It's hard to tell just what
Pampers are ranting about most of the time -- the vocals are usually mixed low amidst the aural murk, and even when they aren't, they're run through enough reverb to render them incomprehensible -- but the band's ferocity is unmistakable at all times, and most of the tunes are short enough that when songs like "Sack Attack" and "Head Bag" charge past three and a half minutes, they sound like epic-scale jams, and
Pampers give them enough weight and velocity to make them memorable.
Pampers is one of the better offerings to rise from the noisy end of New York's garage punk underground, and if this sometimes sounds like a stroll through a sewer main, unlike that experience, this is something you'll probably want to try again. ~ Mark Deming