Wednesday – Rat Saw God

Alternative Rock

54%

 

I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’ve forgotten most of what I learnt in school. I don’t even mean that those lessons are tucked away in some dark, cobwebbed corner of my mind, I mean that information packed up and left so long ago that there’s not a trace of it left in my brain. It’s just one of those odd little inevitabilities of life; the passage of time is a cruel mistress. An equally quirky inevitability is how it’s always the most random useless tidbits which end up being the ones to stick around. Tucked away next to the fact that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, is an English lesson where we were taught that you need to learn the rules before you can break them. The idea that there’s a noticeable difference between someone purposefully messing with the conventions of spelling, grammar, story structure etc. for artistic intent, and someone just making spelling and grammar mistakes because they don’t know what they’re doing.   

Rat Saw God is a messy record. Some of that mess is absolutely intentional, which I can completely get behind. Embracing rough edges can add charm and an all important human touch, which the noisy lo-fi alt rock approach this album takes certainly achieves. However, having sat with the album for some time I remain convinced that most of its rough edges don’t feel intentional. And, if anything, the few that do have intent behind them feel like an attempted smoke screen to hide the album’s failings. The sprawling 8+ minute ‘Bull Believer’ in particular gives me plenty of time to ponder this train of thought. While no one would expect a record in this style, so deeply indebted and inspired by 90s alt rock bands like Sonic Youth and Smashing Pumpkins, to emphasise sharp clear vocals, I would still expect the singing to spend more time in tune than out of it. Any benefit of the doubt I was willing to give for the first half of the song goes out of the window by the time we reach the scattershot warbling and wailing of the latter half, to the point where any time the vocals sound in tune seems like pure coincidence. 

Lyrically it’s a similar story. With the right artistic vision, beauty can be found in ugly and unexpected corners. A street photographer may capture the most suspect alleyway in a new light, a writer may describe the darkest depths with the most vivid of metaphors, a great architect can turn a bland grey mass of concrete into something eye-catching. Rat Saw God doesn’t try and present ugliness through a rose tinted lens, it presents its grim vignettes exactly as they are found. It’s the difference between seeing a picture of a dank, graffitied club toilet, and actually setting foot there and deciding “nah, I can hold it”.  Chosen to deserve is a prime example: “I used to drink ’til I threw up on weeknights at my parents’ house, My friends all took Benadryl ‘Til they could see shit crawlin’ up the walls, One of those times, my friend took a little too much. He had to get his stomach pumped, They took him over to the hospital, And told us he was lucky to survive“. I can appreciate there’s certainly an artistic intent behind the raw, warts-and-all pictures this record paints, in much the same way I respect the same approach taken by films like Trainspotting and Requiem For A Dream – but they aren’t the kind of films one feels eager to return to.

All that said, the album does has its moments of beauty. Opening track ‘Hot Rotten Grass Smell’ offers a fleeting taste of some superb gutsy grunge riffs, while the central melody of ‘Quarry’ reminds me a little of ‘Waterloo Sunset’. Musically ‘Chosen To Deserve’ adeptly fuses alt rock with southern rock and Americana vibes, flitting between its emphatic chorus riffs and dreamy pedal steel, in a way that echoes bands like Wild Pink and Big Thief. ‘What’s So Funny’ has some dreamy vibes straight out of the Sonic Youth playbook, while ‘Turkey Vultures’ boasts some wonderfully expressive drum work. Sadly for me however, these highlights weren’t enough to pull the album out of the hole dug by its failings. Mainly because in every instance where a track is positively reminiscent of another act, I’m reminded that I could just be listening to them instead. Rat Saw God can be a challenging listen at times, and I’m not convinced that the reward waiting at the other side isn’t more easily and comprehensively found elsewhere.