BODY/HEAD - S/T

"Bill Nace (Guitar) and Kim Gordon (Guitar, voice). So much more than a likely pairing, this is a group which manages to illuminate the best of both players while simultaneously pushing them into fresh territory. Live shows have been accompanied by slowed films, and the pairs obsession with cinema comes across in the music itself. The pieces exist as vignettes in and of themselves, all the while presenting a full-bodied emotional narrative over the course of the records 20 minutes. Its fascinating to hear Nace and Gordon develop these ideas, to hear relatively simple pulses, stabs, moans, and calls take shape as something almost like songs. There is a strange terror to this music. Electric shards punch through and shatter the air. There is agonizing pain living in the guitars and genuine anguish in Gordons voice. It is some of the most courageous and emotive singing of her career. This is some of the most fantastically elastic music currently being produced, shifting form and formlessness without batting an eye. Like the best art, it exists out beyond the limits of what we can easily define. Its as pained as it is curious, as free as it is claustrophobic, full of spellbinding tension throughout, from the sparse opening of Turn Me On to the intensely moving and breathtakingly sad closer, Where Did You Go?, a track thats as good as anything either player has ever put to tape. Its so scary and so sad, so tender and so angry, a consummate example of what both musicians are capable of, the capstone to a sequence so satisfying one wants to just play it again. The music changes shape with each listen, behind each shadow lives another melting perspective. Beautifully pressed at 45rpm, the fullness and depth of sound and feeling come through loud and clear. This record is a complete picture, a blurry pool at night, a short story to revisit over and over again. -Matt Krefting.