Pinebender - The High Price Of Living To Long With A Single Dream

Pinebender is a coarse, noise-guitar trio from Chicago. They are loud, down-tempo rock musicians that juggle between deafeningly thunderous guitar riffs and nearly silent interludes. To tell you the truth, the constantly pending threat of one of their earsplitting, crashing change-ups makes the album a little hard to listen to if you aren’t really into it. My personal preference towards this genre, are noise bands that incorporate samples and other random oddities (beyond traditional stringed instruments), artists like Alec Empire, Matmos, and Mike Patton. Pinebender is not this. Pinebender is strictly electric guitar (six string, twelve string, and baritone), drums, and vocals; with this limited consortium they regrettably fall into a ‘regular band’ genre rather than something that is exploratory. Experimental albums have a certain leeway when it comes to listenability, since it doesn’t use tried-and-true techniques to create music. The High Price of Living to Long with a Single Dream isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just very difficult. With so many bands out there that create dense compositions out of just guitar and drums, it is hard to find much interest in this album. There will certainly be people who fall in love with its explosive melodies interweaved in tranquility, however most listeners will probably want to avoid it. [www.pinebender.com]