El Sexy
Dyspepsidisc
By: Eric G.
Fracasos is an upstart band from Evansville, Indiana with many influences but little direction. Any band that evolves out of something called ‘Fernspank’ is already off to a bad start. El Sexy is full of genre-hopping, slightly self-indulgent instrumental interludes, acoustic guitars that sound like they were recorded by a bad salsa band in the mid-eighties, and vocals that are half whispered/half spoken (always a bad idea). Usually “indie” bands relish in the lo-fi recording quality that their four-tracks afford them, but Fracasos’ record just sounds bad without any of the charm of a home recording.
A handful of the musical bits are interesting enough, but the record is borderline unlistenable. “Month Of Sundays” sounds like the band didn’t even rehearse before pressing ‘record’, and, again, the vocals are just terrible- even without the atrocious lyrics: “I want you to lick my skin.” Ugh. The band purports in its press notes that this whole multi-media package (a blurry, half-assed, black and white pencil doodle appears on your screen if your foolish enough to stick this in your PC) can be interpreted as “a commentary on the fashion industry’s representation of humans as nothing more than translucent, robotic imagery.” Give me a break. Surely these guys are still in high school.
1 response so far ↓
1 andy moore // Apr 21, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I think that the above review accurately describes the recording. I should know, since I was the crappy singer and guitar player. I guess you just had to be there at the time to understand how such a thing could be made. I myself was 18 and full of enthusiasm, but lacking in life experience. At the time, seven people were living in a two-bedroom house in between a bank and a taco bell. After 5 visits by the police, the house got raided and we all narrowly avoided jail. Aaron, the brains behind the operation, who by the way didn’t live there, had created most of the tracks before the group became a trio. Who gives a fuck, right? Well, there is so much that went on behind the scenes. I readily agree that for the most part el sexy sucks major balls. We did go on to make better stuff. This was recorded in an attic that was 110 degrees with the keyboard sitting on an old toilet with a deer bone chandelier hanging above it by a bunch of greenhorns…By the way, you’d shit if you heard what we’re doing these days…sigh. Thanks for breakin’ it down. Maybe if we had ambition and equipment we could make it…or not. My new band is called the dang heathens. Aaron is now in a band called stationary odyssey, and Tim is in a band called namaste. And so the musical paths diverge.