Altered Zones

By Ric Leichtung

Big Troubles, hailing from heralded hyper-chic suburb Ridgewood, NJ, is the project of songwriters Ian Drennan and Alex Craig, with Samuel Franklin and Luka Usmiani on non-guitars. Each songwriter has his own respective style; Craig excels in crafting fuzzy pop songs, while Drennan shines in soft yet bludgeoning, lo-fi abrasive tones. Both music dweebs, their charm lies at once in their differences and in their cosmic musical twinhood. Often, they lie in bed together spooning, talking about stuff in the dark. Mid-sentence, one of them puts two fingers on the other's lips and coos, "Don't speak: I know just what you're saying."

My favorite two seconds of the album would have to be its first: in the opening breath of Craig's "Video Rock", there's a sped-up My Bloody Valentine drum quotation (the famous lead-in to "Only Shallow"), announcing the album's agenda. Some would point crooked fingers at this as a fault, but it embodies an important facet of Big Troubles' meta-persona. Big Troubles are a sum of their influences, mixing elements of the sacred cows that we grew up with-- Dinosaur Jr., Jesus and Mary Chain-- with the cult sensibility of the painfully obscure-- Cleaners from Venus and Figdish.

Worry starts out really strong, with songs that you become attached to straight off the bat: "Video Rock", "Modern Intimacy", "Bite Your Tongue", "Freudian Slips", "Drastic and Difficult". You'll listen to these songs over and over. Then there are other ones, less directly hook-y, that you might skip over in favor of listening to the hits on repeat. "Creeper", "Desire For A Certain Thing To Happen", "Astrology Screen Savers": these tracks will attach themselves to you like Alien facehuggers, making Worry an album that just keeps giving.

MP3: Big Troubles: "Video Rock"

MP3: Big Troubles: "Drastic and Difficult"

Worry is available now via Olde English Spelling Bee