Audio By Carbonatix
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Someone should bundle up a copy of Muscler’s Guide to Videonics and send it along to Justine Frishman. Why? Cuz the glorious lo-fi dada goodness these (presumably) Olympia, Wash., gurls have produced is the kind of unhinged dementia that could serve Elastica well in its pursuit of Wire/Mark E. Smith art-pop alienation. But that may be an irrelevant comparison. Tracy + The Plastics may be the finest distillation of all things off-putting and therefore interesting about new/no/etc.-wave since the Scissor Girls roamed the streets of Wicker Park raging against mental complacency with terrifying cerebral catchiness.
Tracy + the Plastics also is, apparently, a three-woman band with some connection to video band Meme America. Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein plays on a song called “Dio” (so there’s that). It’s got classic cheesy keyboard sounds, rudimentary machine beats, queercore glimpses, occasionally droning beat and melody machine flourishes and shaky, affected she-vocals.
Just what the hell does all that mean, exactly? Well, despite a pretension that’s apparently applied by a big ol’ trowel, and an overall aesthetic that’s as obtuse as it is fascinating as it is retro as it is anti-iconic, despite all that (or perhaps because of it) Tracy + The Plastics is the kinda record that won’t let you take your eyes or ears off it.
E-mail Chris Handyside at letters@metrotimes.com.
