Casy & Brian
Location: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://myspace.com/casyandbrian
Bio: Charming nihilism. Intentional unimportance.
Sarcastic oversimplification. Desperate,
barely contained rage focused and aimed at
unfocused, aimless people like a hostage
negotiator's megaphone shoved in the ... (more)
mouth
of a suicide bomber. Casy and Brian are
embedded in the audience they reach out to.
They empathize with our wealth of creative
potential, and our expressive debt. And we
love them for it.
Longing. Loss. Angst. Ambition. Poetry.
Interpersonal relationships and romance.
These themes are played out and
conspicuously absent in Casy and Brian's
thematic repertoire. It seems the lyrical
conventions of rock and roll have been care-
lessly cast aside and replaced with an indif-
ferent, mechanical storytelling treatment-
most audibly in the lyrics of "Greetings
Int'l", a long succession of different transla-
tions for the word "hello" (like fifty), grouped
in westto easterly continental order. Simi-
larly, in "Do Not Attempt This at Home",
they describe in clear detail how to acquire
the materials for, and build an improvised
explosive device - then detonate it, all while
urging the listener to not use the information
imparted. The impartiality of the topics made
available is irresponsible, reckless, and
quaintly terrifying. "Rumble in the Jungle
1974", a big booming bucket of raw soul
breaks, is lyrically only a collection of quotes
by Muhammad Ali collaged together retelling
the story of a famous boxing match, seem-
ingly only satisfy the vocalist's self
imposed thematic limitations, which continue
throughout their upcoming 7” series "NO
FICTION" relentlessly.
Casy and Brian's instrumentation and com-
positional style seem to borrow from too
many disparate genres and then give back to
none of them. 70's punkrock riffs are
slammed together with (obviously) plagia-
rized 60's Motown breaks, then stabbed with
an 80's hardcore break down and spit on by
90's club beats, the resulting sound being
mangled and screaming but unrecognizable,
hence, new. The melodic instrumentation is
starkly ambiguous. The challenge is figuring
out what kind of instrument you are hearing,
and which one of them is playing it (they
swap), and how many are being played. It
sounds like horns and bass sometimes, guitar
and synth at others. It is awkwardly oversim-
plified at one moment, then confusingly busy
the next. It is intentionally vague and catchy
for catchy's sake, and you can tell that
they are trying really hard to give a shit about
their craft, but they just can't be bothered to
get about the business of defining themselves
categorically. And yet the physical intensity
and enthusiasm they display in their
recordings and live performances belies their
desperate need to get up and do something,
anything other than what they are expected
to, and it seems like they expect their audi-
ence and peers to reciprocate, or leave them
alone to do their thing.
Theirs is not a music for bashful people. It is
a monument for hyperactivity and tough
nerdiness, an exercise in being held account-
able for your tastes and understanding them
thoroughly. It is loud and exciting and
exhausting to the ears. It sounds like drill
instructors screaming at you for more in a
gun range on ladies night with firecrackers
exploding in your brain. You can't listen to
this at work, or even in public without head-
phones. You can't see them perform and not
hear them for a three block radius. You can't
not hear them. If you like their music, you're
psyched. If you don't, you're bummed. And it
seems like this ultimatum might just be their
point.
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