Chinese Stars - Heaven on Speed Dial

Anchor Brain Records	November 02, 2009

 

There are questions that keep us up at night – Where have you been all my life Chinese Stars is another one.

There’s a gnarled up root jutting out of a perfect garden. There’s a stain on a preacher’s white satin suit. It’s a curled up toenail that finds its way into a foot model’s portfolio. All this maniacal mishaps are the children of Chinese Stars, who charge with drone guitars and vocals, who synthesize the everyday omelets and clash it all together with a cymbal.

Chinese Stars claw at a fabricated carpet with whining guitars and reveal a treasure trove of dodo eggs long to be forgotten on their latest, Heaven on Speed Dial. Providence, Rhode Island has found its answer to Nuclear Power Pants, deliberately ridiculous drone of rock, an altar to the vocals of the Pixies, but with a thousand yard stare. On the track Kill Me With Your Conversation Eric Paul (formerly of Arab on Radar) drones, ‘she’s taking pills, handfuls/ handfuls/she’s taking all the pills,’ cheering on the inevitable OD and perhaps the consequences of feeling too good in this day and age. It is a Mˆbius strip, with the trip coming after the song has been written, but perhaps the song was written by the trip before hand, thus always feeding into some vicious circle.

Slow Children is an example of cascading guitars bursting through barricaded doors and each bass line pulsing with exaggeration to claim the last of the survivors. Are you going to spend the night – is repeated, over and over again, as though this madness were welcomed, as though everyone were going to get lucky and we shouldn’t question where it’s going from here with the heavy bass line. Oh no, don’t question it. The imperfection, the stain on the suit, the curled up toenail, its’ all relevant to the break from the norm, to the spiral back to our everyday lives, to our escape and our arrival again.

by Nathan Solis