Pitchfork

Political pundits, when discussing the United States in relation to the rest of the world, like to frame things in a particular context. We are in a post-9/11 world, where American citizens hoard duct tape and look for suspicious crop dusters, where we are at war, the powers-that-be deliberately confused and conflated the reasons for this war, and the most prominent members of the fourth estate long avoided asking important questions. A few musicians have taken to asking some of these questions in their own work, with mixed results. Erase Errata-- frontwoman Jenny Hoyston in particular-- has never shied from topical issues, though a direct route from expression to meaning was rarely taken. But, as President Bush has said so many times, things change.

Back in the day (2001, to be exact), Erase Errata were a four-piece quartet mixing and mashing together all sorts of skronk and skree to create a glorious racket reminiscent of a no-wave group going for the new-wave brass ring. Hoyston spit out imagistic lyrical fragments in a fashion that mirrored the fret work of both guitarist Sara Jaffe and bassist Ellie Erickson, while Bianca Sparta rumbled across her drumkit. They recorded two albums, they toured, they kicked ass. But they hit a speed bum when Jaffe decided to leave the group to attend graduate school. Hoyston took over on guitar, and while the group temporarily experimented with a new (male) singer, the remaining trio decided to go it alone, and spent two years trying to rediscover and, ultimately, redefine themselves. The result of that search is Nightlife, a focused and more powerful version of the group's scattershot aesthetic. While it's not a drastic departure from previous works, this album finds the group marshaling their powers to cut to the quick both musically and lyrically.

Previously, Hoyston's voice was just another off-kilter instrument, joyously bounding about the racket her bandmates created. Her fragmented musics, while still audible, were often subsumed either by the ruckus, low production values, or megaphone static. Now, Hoyston's words are exacting and precise, and her voice is front and center. Eli Crews and especially Chris Woodhouse (a producer for the A-Frames) deserve credit for getting the new Erase Errata down on tape so successfully, working perfectly in tandem with Hoyston's lyrical approach. When she says “Yes, I really got away/ With murder, manslaughter/ All funded by my tax dollar,” or “They've got a law in the desert ...where everybody has a gun/ Everybody has a knife,” you hear what she's saying-- literally and metaphorically-- without question. Any advantages lost by Hoyston eschewing her trademark oblique phrasings are regained by the blunt impact of the words. In her most brilliantly simple moment, Hoyston gets monosyllabic on the lesbionic love song “Take You”. “I'm gonna take both of you/ To my secret cave,” she coos, subverting the clichéd caveman-dragging-girl image (and, by proxy, traditional gender roles) in multiple ways while the music behind her bangs and booms like rocks on logs.

Even on more impressionistic songs like “Giant Hans” or “Cruising", Hoyston cuts to the quick. Hoyston's trumpet is also employed sparingly, but precisely-- it sets a mournful tone for the beginning of “Hotel Suicide”, and provides some recognizable bleats on “Another Genius Idea”. This less-is-more approach also applies to her work as a guitarist. While Jaffe played guitar in a showy fashion, Hoyston uses the instrument more often to accent the song with scrapes or brief squalls. Still, there are moments where she puts her foot on the monitor to shred, such as the Sabbath-like break in “Dust”.

Nightlife, much more than the other Erase Errata records, is all about the rhythm section. If there's a guitar hero to be had on Nightlife, it's Erickson. Her off-kilter plucking and mangling, in tandem with Sparta's locked-down drumming, defines this album right from the beginning. It's to their credit that this mostly mournful or menacing-sounding album rises above its own morass. Sunshine and lollipops aren't in great supply when denouncing U.S. foreign policy or wiretapping programs, but the band's work on “Tax Dollar” and “Another Genius Idea” keeps the message from ossifying. Make no mistake, however-- there's a message to be had on this record, and it's hard to ignore. Erase Errata might not be as playful as they once were, but they're much better.