Secret Lives of the Freemasons - This Was Built to Make You Dance

Don’t let the cover fool you. With pretty much a phrase for a band name, and an album title alluding to the plethora of dance-rock acts being birthed out of New York/Glasgow/whatever, you might expect some sort of Blink 182-ish satire (I use the term loosely). But like I said, don’t be fooled, because this North Carolina six-piece offers instead a debut full of aches, breaks, and carnal screaming. Immediately striking is the fantastic production. For an album recorded in just over four days, these guys got serious bang for their buck. But due credit to the musicians themselves: Having been blessed with not one, not two, but three guitarists on top of their shit, the resultant sound is rich, melodic, and unusually clean. Clearly their greatest asset, and what carries all eleven tracks, it just goes to prove you can never have too many sonic layers, even for a screamo outfit. Drummer Travis Moss is equally impressive, standing out above the band on "To the Barricades" in particularly thunderous fashion. If there’s one thing that keeps me from giving this record a better grade, it's lead singer Brien Worsham’s writing. Ranging from dime-a-dozen-angst to Henry Miller-esque controversy, it’s not so much that I hate the lyrics as much as they’ve forced me to the fence. Take for example "It only took a whisper." With the lyrics "So can I ravage you where I stand?," I could get offended and have my knickers in a knot, but I’d rather take it as cathartic honesty...a sort of desperate confession of sexual urgency and perversion we’re all victim to at our lowest. And I’ll keep on being a good sport for art’s sake. But then there’s the appropriately titled "If it weren’t for pick pockets, I’d have no sexlife at all." With lyrics like "Can I take you home? Can I eat you up? Can I spit you out?," recurring moans, and Worsham screaming "Her sex is like death on two legs," I’m a little less sympathetic. We’ve suddenly gone from crying over ex-girlfriends to beating up hookers. There is one other annoyance, namely the little song vignettes peppered in between. A staple with most concept albums, here these are really just pointless distractions, seeing as how they have nothing to do with the rest of the record. Overall, this is certainly not a bad first effort. Not mind-blowing, but definitely not bad. A bit of dabbling in varying song structure, and firing whoever came up with those stupid song titles, should do them wonders. [www.astromagnetics.com]