On their fourth album, You Could Do It Tonight (out April 19 on Brutal Panda Records), NY-noise-rock outfit Couch Slut come roaring back with a terrifyingly compelling assault of dirty rock and trauma.
Have you ever laughed and cried at the same time? It’s a strange experience, to feel a rising desperation that has to be released, alongside a giddying catharsis. “Laughing and Crying,” as well as being the title to one of the tracks here, seems to encapsulate You Could Do It Tonight as a whole (and maybe even the essence of Couch Slut).
With vocalist Megan Osztrosits largely screaming her way through the record, it feels at times like witnessing a breakdown. Should we be passively standing by? The music behind her (largely written by drummer Theo Nobel) is a heaving mix, not just of noise rock (Oxbow and Jesus Lizard being relevant reference points), but at times also shades of black metal, jazz, lounge, and a(n un)healthy dose of Lydia-Lunch-and-Birthday-Party-invoking no wave. There’s definite musical finesse here—the music more inventive than it might at first seem.
But this isn’t Mr Bungle. You Could Do It Tonight is a stew that’s been sitting in the pan overnight. Meanwhile, the apartment caught fire. But in the glowing embers some hungry dogs caught a whiff and now they’re chowing down.
And what are some of the words that spring to mind listening to this record? Stalking, desperation, stumbling, determination, gritted teeth, monsters.
So where’s the funny? Well you have to be pretty twisted to find it, but then you have to be pretty twisted to choose to enter this world (and stay in it!).
Tracks like opener “Couch Slut Lewis,” “Energy Crystals For Healing,” and “Downhill Racer” exemplify the style of much of the record. Heavy, dirty, lurching rock, catchy somehow, but progressively more and more overwhelming. Add Osztrosits’ relentless, screamed delivery over the top, and it’s hard not to feel oppressed.
And it isn’t just screaming for screaming’s sake. The music here underpins largely autobiographical tales, and let’s just say the content fits the delivery. “Wilkinson’s Sword,” for example, tells of the vocalist’s recalled delight at discovering a more efficient means of self harm.
A whole album of this might be too much. So what does the band do? Well, they break up these barrages with the bizarre Tom Waits-style noir-jazz interlude of “Presidential Welcome” and two more-spoken (or shouted) tracks “The Donkey” and closer “The Weaversville Home For Boys.” The former includes blood-soaked dolls in the back of the singer’s car, while the latter is an ultimately fantastical (but partially real) story of a group of murderous, rapist youths who violently escaped a facility.
And that still doesn’t sound funny on paper, but somehow in this auditory assault and grim, semi-autobiographical subject matter, there’s an awareness of the absurdity of how bad it all gets, and in the end, the laughter just comes out. It’s almost like a self-defense mechanism, like there’s only so much horror a person can take before they instinctively laugh in response to that horror.
In fact, in the very last moments of the album, that’s exactly what we get. A laugh, as if to acknowledge, yeah this was brutal, but hey, you can still find comedy in the worst situations.
Phew, it wasn’t just me then.
Buy You Could Do It Tonight here.
