Skeleton Key
Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon (Capitol)
by Lex Marburger
These guys are from New York? Really? Gee, with all their melodic skronk and bleat, I couldn’t tell. What with Eric “Lounge Lizards” Sanko on bass (and hey, he’s got a pretty good voice, too), some high-noise guitar, drums, and the added bonus of a “various solid objects” (read: trash, metal, what-have-you) player, you’ve got yourself a recipe for some serious weirdness with Skeleton Key. Lucky for us, they keep it within the realm of human consciousness on Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon. Melodies, bouncy rhythms, and lots of positive energy abound here. But don’t think that you’ll find some NY Lurie jazz scene here; Eric is here to jump up and down a lot, and play some grooving left-field rock. Even with the distorted guitar excursions into noise territory, and even with the sometimes-arrhythmic “various objects” guy, Rick Lee, there’s a sensibility that anyone will be able to grasp. Accessible NCP (that’s No Commercial Potential, for all you Hootie fans) music? Really? Skeleton Key plays some pretty odd music, but Fantastic Spikes… has enough hooks and recognizable “song” elements to appeal to even only slightly adventurous listeners. Other than the demented carnival ride of “The Only Useful Word” with its Clowns-on-PCP, uh… “riffs,” the songs mostly stay in the shape of songs, although they do sort of jut out at odd angles sometimes. But hey, a little variety is good for the soul. And it’s not just variety within the song itself, it’s the whole album. From the good-natured shuffle that is “Watch the Fat Man Swing” to the vicious attack of “Vomit Ascot,” Skeleton Key dips their musical ladle into the boiling cesspool of the NYC Music Scene, and help themselves to whatever chunks they’ve captured. There’s a little ’87 era Sebadoh in “Dear Reader,” some Beefheart-inspired rhythms in “Wide Open,” and some good old ’80s alterna-pop (like Television, albeit mixed through a blender) in “Scratch.” There’s even a hint of Tom Waits in “Big Teeth.” The great thing is, it took me about a dozen listens to Fantastic Spikes… before I could make those references. Skeleton Key blends it in so well, internalizes it, and makes it their own, that it’s difficult to pick out traces of other musics (while it’s idiotically simple for a band like, say, Bush). If all goes well, these guys will start getting hordes of screaming fans, tearing off their clothes and hitting each other over the head with pieces of metal… Hmm, maybe they’d be better off if MTV didn’t get a hold of them. It’ll be our little secret, all right?
