Album: Love’s Miracle
Artist: Qui
Genre: Noise/Minimalist Rock
Year: 2007
Label: Ipecac
ATTENTION: If you want, you can listen to me reading the review to you. Look for the media player at the bottom of this post.
Sometimes I stare at the wall and wonder what I’m gonna be when I grow up. If this college thing works out then I could actually be an actor. Sometimes though, I stare at the wall and imagine that I’m going to be David Yow when I grow up. As fantasies go and rock frontman to worship, Yow may seem initially like a strange choice. He can’t really sing, he’s shorter than you and weirder looking than anyone you’ve probably ever seen in your entire life. But goddamn if the man is not one of the greatest frontmen and performers I’ve ever seen. I had the good fortune to catch The Jesus Lizard at the Capitol Hill Block Party last summer and witnessed this whirling dervish of a man in person as he howled his way through their impressive set list. For being 49 years old, Yow is still as crazy as he was back in the day, if not crazier. He spent most of the show crowd surfing and still managed to sing the songs. But The Jesus Lizard is only reuniting briefly and this is going to be the last time, so what is Yow doing with the rest of his life? The answer is the band Qui. Qui started out as a two-piece Los Angeles band made up by guitarist Matt Cronk and drummer Paul Christensen who released their first album as a duo in 2003. In 2006 Yow joined them as a guest at some of their shows and eventually graduated to fulltime band member and lead vocalist. The band’s most recent release, 2007’s Love’s Miracle, is the first album with Yow and it is perhaps the strangest album in the man’s remarkable discography.
I had a conversation with another music writer friend of mine about Qui. I asked my friend what he thought of them seeing as how he was a fan of The Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid. My friend was indifferent and more or less said that he couldn’t quite get into Qui because it was just Yow being crazy and there was no Duane Denison or David Wm. Sims to balance him out. This to me sounds like the opinion of someone who hasn’t listened very closely to this album. Here’s why: The first reason is that Qui was around before Yow joined and he is in a way the junior member of the band. The core duo of Cronk and Christensen have been playing music together for a long time and they’ve got great synergy. Their dual musicianship does balance out Yow’s insanity and does it very well even. The second reason is that Love’s Miracle is one of the calmest albums Yow has ever lent his vocals to and it shows him doing things that you’d never expect from him if you were only familiar with Scratch Acid and The Jesus Lizard. Namely: singing. He still howls, yowls and screams bloody murder like someone just took an axe to his fingers but he actually has some sobering moments of calm that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else in his musical repertoire. It’s strange, but I like it.
Qui is a very different sounding band from The Jesus Lizard seeing as how they’ve only got a guitar and drum set to work with and their musicians come from very different places. But both bands can at times be brought under the umbrella of Noise Rock, the difference is that Qui has a more minimalistic bent to their song structure. In fact, I’d have to say when you boil it down, the only thing the two bands have in common is Yow and an appreciation for raw noise. “Apartment” is the album’s opening track and its taut simplicity sets the album’s stage. The song makes a crashing entrance. Then the drums drop away and we’re left with just a twitchy guitar line over which Yow intones somber inquiries about his apartment. As the song continues, the drums slowly creep back in. Yow’s vocals disappear entirely as the twitching music becomes more and more agitated before returning to its taut guitar line and Yow’s repetitive questioning. It’s an unusual beginning to an album featuring Yow, hardly a “Cannibal” or “Boilermaker.” He doesn’t even scream once. But the song is still a good one.
On the second track, “Today, Gestation,” the band maintains this atmosphere of tension that occasionally explodes into full throttle fury. Yow tells a story about a cross-dressing nightmare full of surrealist images and full on screams. “Gash” and “Freeze” are the two tracks that best demonstrate Qui’s Noise Rock sensibilities and both feature Yow at his irate pinnacle. After those two tracks comes possibly the strangest song on the entire album in the form of “New Orleans” which takes a good chunk of time trying to get off the ground before finally flying. It’s also strange because it features some of Yow at his most tuneful. Again, he’s actually singing melody instead of just screaming, which for him, is downright weird. What follows “New Orleans” is the second half of the album, which contains two more original Qui songs and two bizarre covers. The first original is the minimal “A #1” which is the finest example of Qui’s use of slow (but not glacial) tempos and ability to show restraint in all the right places before bursting into crushing walls of sound. It’s the quiet-loud-quiet formula taken to logical conclusions.
The other original is the somewhat forgettable screamer “Belt” which finds itself uncomfortably sandwiched between two epic covers of Frank Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp” and Pink Floyd’s “Echoes.” Probably the second nosiest track on the album, “Willie The Pimp” is done severe justice by Qui, and was probably chosen because it’s a perfect song for Yow to sing considering the vocalist on the original version was Captain Beefheart. And Yow gets into it, getting madder and madder throughout the song before wildly yelling obscene nonsense like a lunatic at the end.
To wrap up the album though, we have a faithful rendition of the first part of Pink Floyd’s classic “Echoes” which is about the last thing I was expecting when I picked this album up. With all the noise and screaming I was hardly expecting something as beautiful as this final track which, while still being a crunchy rocker when performed by Qui, gets two thumbs up. Meddle is my favorite Pink Floyd album and it makes me pleased as punch to find a cover version of “Echoes” that A) doesn’t suck and B) doesn’t take a half an hour to play. Qui’s version clocks in at six minutes and 37 seconds.
Qui is every bit as worthy of your attention as The Jesus Lizard or Scratch Acid, but Love’s Miracle is destined to be one of those albums that most people completely overlook. Hence the loving review. With this piece of awesome under their belt, I’m excited to see what Qui does next. Another album with Yow wouldn’t be out of the question… please?
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