Blaze McKenzie loves his toys. His solo project puts vocals through the meat grinder, and his production work with Sydney Wayser finds the artist surrounded in sharply resonating chimes.
But for his own group, Blaze dials the textures back. He describes The Can’t Tells as ‘the only Non-Noise band in Brooklyn.’ But one could reasonably disagree. On their self-titled debut, the song ‘You’re Not Listening’ taunts the listener with the lyrics: ‘You’re not listening, cuz I’m not saying it right’ for the last half of the tune, sandwiched between layers of feedback that build to frenzy, whether he’s saying ‘it’ right or not.
Similarly, listen to the desperate lover portrayed in ‘Whipping Boy’ fall down a well of jagged guitar sounds, never quite reaching the bottom before the song abruptly ends, and you’ll start to get the picture… this is some well-thought out stuff, noise and all. A lo-fi tinkerer cut from the fabric of Atlas Sound, Blaze never reaches the bottom of his toolbox; placing mellotron, chimes and violins on the same team. But while he’s tinkering away in the background, he’s waxing poetic in the foreground. Blaze possesses an unassuming voice made to deal with a lot of these moving parts, always placing texture in service of testimonial.
There’s a lot going on here, and the way the three-piece is able to bring it all to bear in this cohesive and well-rounded effort, makes me more than happy to play in their sandbox a little while. See them play Piano’s Nov 22nd with Fete and Ego Puppets. – Mike Levine (@goldnuggets)
