The latest volume in Bulbous Monocle’s Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 reissue campaign vaults over the Matador years back to the band’s earliest LP. Tangle was released in 1989, prior to TFUL282’s years of rigorous touring. It’s a first album; you can hear styles engaged and influences acknowledged in a partially digested manner that differs from their later years, when, if they wanted to sound like something, they just covered the song.
There’s a deep vein of blues and western guitar, most evident on the slow, sinister groove of “Cold Cold Ground,” but also audible on the twangy lead guitar of “Sister Hell” and the languid slide intro to “Choke.” The band works a few Sonic Youth moves into the mix as well, like the riffs on “Sports Car” and “What Time Is It?”
But TFUL282 also takes those riffs and torques them hard, like a cartoon train taking leave of the tracks and tilting in the air on a sharp turn. Even before they started spending a lot of time on the road, the Fellers were tight and had chops to spare. And they already had a pretty clear idea that while they wanted to rock most persuasively, they also wanted to be different, and they had the ability to make it all hang together.
This ambition was evident in the singing, which could be manically wacky or faux-hayseed malevolent, popping out of the songs like a jack-in-the-box with sharp teeth. And it was confirmed by the fearless zig-zagging of their song structures, such as the lurches between hips-like-weapons swagger and abandoned riff murder on the album-closing “Choke.” Tangle reveals a band with ideas to burn and pockets full of matches. [Bulbous Monocle]
—Bill Meyer
