Review: Basement Membranes

True Womanhood is a DC band I've been hyping for a long time. Here is a review of their new record:

Their early, chaotic performances drew comparisons to Sonic Youth, a juxtaposition that never really captured the band's sound, but was nonetheless virtually unavoidable for a period of time. To hear True Womanhood today, upon the release of their debut EP, the moody, ambient Basement Membranes, it would be difficult to ascertain how anyone ever made the comparison.

It seems worth of injecting a bit of band history here. Founding member Ross Kerr, whose noisy, bombastic guitar heroics were incontrovertibly a huge part of the True Womanhood sound, quit last year shortly after their first northeast tour. Rather than attempt to replace Kerr, the band chose to continue as a trio. This necessitated a drastic re-imagining of virtually every song in the band's repertoire. A comparison the versions of "Rubber Buoys" and "Shadow People" in the above-linked post to the ones found on Basement Membranes is telling. Where squalls of angular guitar once dominated, now a more subdued, almost claustrophobic ambiance prevails.

This approach is not always well-suited to the material. The aforementioned two tracks, which seem to have been notched down not only in volume, but also in tempo, feel particularly lethargic. However, tracks like "The Monk" and "Dignitas", which open the record, work quite well. The former, in particular, is gorgeous here, its chorus positively soaring.

As Sonic Youth comparisons once prevailed in reviews of True Womanhood, so do Radiohead comparisons today, and understandably so. Thomas Redmond's vocals really do sound an uncanny amount like Thom Yorke's, and tracks like "Magic Child" and "A Diviner" could almost be outtakes from Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows, respectively. That said, there is more than that going on here as well, and the majority of the tracks bear little overall resemblance to The Greatest Rock Band Since The Beatles.

True Womanhood have accomplished something here that would be an impressive feat for even a much more seasoned band. They have recovered from the loss of a core element of the group's sound and managed to release a strong, coherent set of songs that neither pines for their past nor dispatches with it entirely. I have complete faith that the band's debut full-length, which they have already begun recording with Baltimore studio wizard J. Robbins, will further refine their already-impressive material.

Stream and buy Basement Membranes from Baltimore's Environmental Aesthetics here. Find True Womanhood on Myspace here.