Cheer-Accident

Not A Food (Pravda)
by Clarendon Lavorich

For an experimental rock band that started in 1981, Cheer Accident has certainly kept up with the times. Try to imagine a cheerful King Crimson from Chicago, with a little grunge thrown in for good measure, produced by Steve Albini. Add a few blasts of random aural assault and you’ve got yourself a damn fine band. While I was trying to figure out whether or not they were just very talented show-offs, I came across the fact that they have been known to go on TV and play one chord for an hour, or possibly just fool around with a castanet. Clearly, they don’t feel the need to be complicated just as an ego boost. There’s something deeper at work here, a willingness not to play, a potential to try new stuff, experiment outside of their chops. But this is refined by a complicated aesthetic, one that doesn’t allow mindless wanking and pointless sounds.

Everything on Not A Food is thoughtfully constructed and marked by extended repetition of strange rhythms, letting them settle in and become a groove before trying to mess with them. That makes it much easier on us, because we can start to get a feel of where they’re coming from, and can follow when they venture into the unknown. As a closer, Cheer Accident shows once again they aren’t stuffy about their music by “remixing” the first track, which ends up sounding like my CD player is self-destructing.