Consumer Guide Album

P.S. Eliot: Sadie [Salinas, 2011]
With one slow and excellent exception and a few deviations, all 13 punky songs on the second album by the first (recorded) band built around Alabama's twin Crutchfield sisters are defined by a crude, catchy, commonplace guitar riff and proceed over drumming that keeps its figuration simple and repetitive when it doesn't bang outright. Simultaneously hesitant and forthright, singer Katie Crutchfield sounds above all brave as she pronounces and occasionally mispronounces her lyrics, which dwell on botched communication both verbal and emotional. Her language is usually plain ("Your eyes go crossed like mine/You'll regret that when you're older") but sometimes gawkily high-flown ("Your endeared negligence," "The cold and correlated closely flock"). On my favorite track, "Pink Sheets," it combines the two: "Rose quartz, star charts/We heal our broken hearts/With warped reality/And practical psychology." But always there is the sound of becoming that the young treasure for one reason and the ex-young value for quite another. A-