Pylon
Issue #34
Gyrate Plus (DFA)
By Charlotte Robinson
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 12:06am
Thrust into the spotlight by the success of R.E.M. and the B-52's, the sleepy college town of Athens, Georgia, was hailed as a bastion of rocknroll cool in the early 1980s. The coolest band in that coolest of towns by most accounts was Pylon, a foursome that grew out of the local party scene, recorded two albums, played with acts like Gang of Four and the B-52's, and drew rave reviews from prominent music rags. But they threw in the towel, as one of them put it in the documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out, "while we were still having a good time." (They have reunited several times.)
Listening to Pylon's 1980 full-length debut some 27 years later, it's obvious that they were too provocative and deliberately weird to pass muster on MTV anyway. Released on CD for the first time with extra tracks and a Plus appended to its title, Gyrate is all minimalism and jittery, raw nerves. Both the music and the lyrics, alternately shouted and grunted by Vanessa Briscoe, seem to imply frustration and menace as often as knowing humor.
The ingredients blend perfectly on "Stop It,” a rock anti-anthem whose only lyrics are "Don't rock and roll, no / Now rock and roll, now / Hey kids." The aggressive, masochistic "Feast on My Heart" is another standout, but Gyrate mostly finds Pylon being as unrelenting as contemporaries like PiL or the Slits, but not nearly as experimental. What that means is that, despite a few unexpected musical flourishes, the songs tend to blend together. Still, Pylon's was a sound never replicated and totally their own — something that can't be said about too many artists.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more