the nomenclaturally maligned overlord continues its lo-fi pop-core sound with several cd releases and innumerable performances spanning many years and line-ups, doing injustice to its influences and leaving its members aching.

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Modern Rock, POP: Beatles-pop



Details:
The full-length album THE WORLD TAKES is the follow-up
release to the critically lauded and commercially invisible EP, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHEMISTRY (Storm Tower, 2001). Both are obsessive-compulsively assembled, genre-hopping cultural deconstructions proffered by the relentlessly obscure Philadelphia-based indie pop/rock outfit, overlord.

The disc's ten tracks demonstrate varying degrees of influence by the usual suspects - the Smiths, the Magnetic Fields, the Beach Boys, Stereolab, early REM, Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine - along with various other indie/lo-fi/garage rock progenitors and contemporaries. The resulting sound is thus easily delineated, as the melodic underpinnings of each song consist of lead basslines, tom heavy drums, thick guitars, unconventional production, a tabernacle choir's worth of vocal overdubs and an unwholesome quantity of reverb. And then there's the ukulele.

Lyrically, things are a bit dicier. Awash in mathematical terminology and historical citations, these tales of social castration, physical desperation, predestination and personal revisionism owe as much to Newton and Gibbon as to Morrissey and Merritt. Coupled with a modicum of mordant humor and varying degrees of despair, overlord's sugary pop is the memetic equivalent of a candy apple with a nail in it.

Whether playing to several thousand supporters (and CSPAN cameras) at an atheist rally at the US Capitol, to a few hundred inebriated hipsters at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, to dozens of friends in Philadelphia or to five rightfully confused locals at Springwater (a Nashville dive adjacent to a slaughterhouse), overlord's sparse live performances have showcased its innumerable line-ups, each an all-volunteer corps of skilled and briefly enthralled musicians. Not quite innumerable: There have been 18 members over 15 incarnations.

Moreover, as a tale of bicoastal mitosis, the disc details the travails of overlord's experiment in franchising, in which separate but identically named bands have been established on each side of the United States. Whether this antipublicity stunt between east coast/west coast factions of overlord will heat up is unclear; that band guru and mope-rock purloiner George Pasles will soon perish in a drive-by suicide is absolutely certain.

The neon slogan affixed to a century old girder bridge joining two economically depressed portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey has been truncated and co-opted to suit the release.

Chris Markwood plays drums on Room Enough and Secrets in Pairs. He also sings lead on Secrets in Pairs.

David Finzimer plays drums on Human to the Corps.

Wilbo Wright plays cello and bowed bass on One & Only One.

Dan Nosheny plays toy piano on Warm Body and accordion on One & Only One.

Engineered by Erik Colvin, Janus Green & Vince Ratti.

Cover photography by A. R. Wilkinson of Guldsveinen.