Chevy Heston

Destroy (Cherrydisc)
by Nik Rainey

In the world of Chevy Heston, suburban life is a phantasmagoric nightmare, a John Hughes film re-written by William S. Burroughs, a realm of depravity and revulsion where doped-up horror is commonplace and pop songs are corporate fascist anthems. Fun world, eh? To ears jaded by formula and cultural clichés, it sure is. Destroy, their second album, finds Chevy continuing on their quest to reconfigure used rock ‘n’ roll parts into a brand new shambling beast, slouching towards Dystopia to be born. In other words, this ain’t your father’s rock ‘n’ roll.

Fleeting clots of chorus-free wax take the place of tunes on Destroy, fragmented mutilations of recognizable formulas (such as the Bo Diddley beat-off of “Body Disposal Explosion”) driven by Chic Curtis’ splutter-thud drums, over which Heston croons shitstream-of-consciousness narratives along the lines of “The librarian had her finger firmly on her clit when she was interrupted by a janitor who had pictures of Mr. Petrangelo and Joey Spencer together blowing each other.” (Everybody sing along now!) And nowhere is their anti-rock stance more explicit than on the title number (“Your chorus makes me sick/Your formula is a fuckin’ tradition”), a pissed off manifesto made subversive by the fact that it’s by far the catchiest thing on the album. Those little scamps. Depending on your mood, Destroy will leave you either nauseated, numbed, or in hysterics. Maybe all three. How many albums can you say that about?