Pitchfork

It was my fault; I always play music too loud in the car. But I can't help holding Les Georges Leningrad partially responsible. I was parked at the library when I first heard their second record, Sur les Traces de Black Eskimo. The album opens with "Missing Gary", a loony song-skit where a low frequency and ragged screams ballast a monologue that seems like a skewed award acceptance speech, culminating in the problem with Gary, who won't let anyone else drive the tour van. The intro augurs the darkly ironic sense of humor and unhinged, abrasive dub-punk that inform the record, and just as I was settling in to its haywire aesthetic, it happened. Without warning, my speakers belched out a volley of bass tones so stridently concussive that my car literally rocked on its chassis; I actually thought that another vehicle had plowed into my own. It seemed like a willful, malicious bit of mischief: "Let's see if we can blow out unsuspecting listeners' speakers."

Which isn't too far-fetched, considering that mischief is Montreal art-marauders Les Georges Leningrad's calling card. The band has dubbed their chaotic, tongue-in-cheek concoction "petrochemical rock," a mangled mass of dubby Pere Ubuism, shuddering electronic clangor, lean post-punk guitars, and surreal lyrical non-sequiturs. They perform in crude, vaguely totemic paper masks, with antics bordering on G.G. Allin-style shock art-- albeit with a more irreverent and less scatological bent. Their interviews read like Antonin Artaud poems, and are more like extensions of their artistic sensibility than informative conduits (from a Seattle Weekly interview: "We were four heads screwed on a crab body. Now we are three creatures.").

But like all of Les Georges Leningrad's giddy nonsense, a truth is concealed beneath the absurdity-- they were a four piece on their debut, Deux Hot Dogs Moutarde Chou, but they've scaled back to three for this follow-up, which profits from the trimmer roster. While all their rasping aggression remains intact, it's more streamlined than on their occluded debut and the songs are more catchy and discernible. The story of the Black Eskimo ostensibly frames the record, but it seems like another red herring, another layer of preposterous juxtaposition.

After the aforementioned barrage of bass subsides, "Missing Gary" collapses into rigid, whip-cracking drum and bass, cries of "Let me drive, let me drive" cloaked in shifting digital afflatus. "Sponsorships" would be well-suited to driving at night while hopped up on meth (not that Pitchfork condones such an activity); cracking drums and an angry hornets' nest of guitars buffet Poney P as she whisks her bratty caterwaul around blind curves. The inflexible dub of "Black Eskimo" intersperses its lockstep sections with expanses of arid, windswept effluvium. "Nebraska's Valentine" is one of a couple tracks built on a foundation of bass so deep and soupy it buzzes down the spine with the dull ache of a Mini Thin high. And the galloping acid-disco of "Supa Dupa" is as close as Les Georges Leningrad come to what passes for traditional in post-punk, all pounding drums and precisely careening bass.

Cursory, half-baked references to Dada abound in modern music, but Les Georges Leningrad seem genuinely steeped in it. They're not satisfied with name dropping, they inject the disruptive, exuberant spirit of Dada into every aspect of their music and public personas. Ffor fans of post-punk that's challenging and artistically informed-- but not self-important-- Sur les Traces de Black Eskimo comes highly recommended. Just do yourself a favor, crank the bass on your equalizer down low before you give it a spin.