[ Home | Press Clippings ]

The Village Voice

The following first appeared in The Village Voice in early 1985.

New London Calling

By Robert Christgau

A decade ago now, punk joined the immemorial avant-garde attack on bourgeois sentimentality by stripping "rock" of its deracinated roots. As the tradition of the new (all right, the novel) returned to pop music, rock's blues and country usages - its fancy guitar parts and simplistic rhythms, reliable changes and all-to-human tonalities, all-out shows of emotion and Southernesque vocal mannerisms - gradually waned into the MOR netherworld. And inevitably, punk's inheritors, turned off by "rock" that by then seemed all-too-inhuman, rediscovered blues and country roots. A healthy reaction, except for one thing: even the Blasters and Los Lobos flirt with nostalgia - that is, with bourgeois sentimentality. This is not the Reducers' problem.

The Reducers have been the same fast two-guitars-bass-and-drums from New London, Connecticut, for six years. Unlike the Blasters or Los Lobos, they don't have MAJOR BAND written all over them. They're too stripped - too reduced. Formally, the Reducers' "honky imitation of the blues" bears the same relation to their sources as the Ramones' anonymous three-chord metal-pop did to theirs, but they won't be hailed as minimalists because their sources put a premium on personal expressiveness; no matter how you strip down and speed up blues and country, they still convey unmediated emotion. So the Reducers' anger is their own rather than some persona's, their satire straightforward and a little corny rather than deadpan. For cartoony affectlessness they substitute contained, rapid-fire soul; for chordal roar, licks and even quick, clipped, vaguely Claptonesque solos; for ur-pop hooks, a honky imitation of the blues. Like the Ramones', their songs stay with you almost from first hearing, only with the Reducers you're certain they stole the parts. Everybody I've played their album for has been positive they sounded like somebody else. Nobody has been able to name who.

Actually, there are two albums, both released in 1984 on their Rave On label (Box 1388, New London, 06230). The Reducers is a glorified demo, so the sound could be crisper, but the attack is sharp enough to compensate, and the songs are there; at the Ritz March 16 they introduced "No Ambition" as their anthem, but "Out of Step" and (in a less theoretical vein) "Black Plastic Shoes" might also qualify. Let's Go! came out in November and proved a genuine underground hit in the wake of impressive college radio exposure (up to 15 on one national chart). It's a record that kicks in instantly - the lead and title cut, about escaping to Paris for food, London for music, Florida for orange juice, New York for the Daily News, and so forth, takes off from a teasingly elongated Steve Kaika bass part that adds just the right melodic fillip to a classic raver. The album doesn't see to have much depth, though - until you play it 20 times and notice it hasn't quit on you.

Nor did the band let up live. Spurred on by a busload of friendly New Lodnon crazies, they reclaimed the pleasures of tight, leading off with the frantic "Maximum Depression" and maintaining that pace for an hour without a false move. You don't often see a band who combine such storied bar-band professionalism with such uncompromising attitued. No lyricism, no slow ones, no respect. Second encore they faked a schlocky verse of "Mack the Knife" before seizing the song from Bobby Darin (and Louis Armstrong) at a double time as nasty as Brecht's lyric once was. And then, if I'm not mistaken, they did a fast version of "Going Down Slow."

When I say these guys have roots I don't mean they traffic in any kind of Americana except rock and roll; they sound familiar and like the Rolling Stones ought to, with Tom Trobley sending out a flat, tough beat as pure if not as magical as that of Charlie Watts himself. Hugh Birdsall, a dirty blond with wild eyes and a sharp nose, sings as if barely holding in a lifetime of rage and rips off the solos; group leader and second guitarist Peter Detmold, big and bespectacled with a Jewish Afro, seems somewhat more reflective and takes most of the socially consious numbers. There are plenty of those, but the politics stay on a pretty basic eyes-open level, and unlike more self-conscious roots bands the Reducers haven't yet moved on to "adult" subjects - these are the discontents of fairly ordinary non-metropolitan under-25s who don't want to buy into the system. Their sheer speed bespeaks their rock and roll integrity - it means they haven't given up, not yet, God damn it.

Copyright 1985 by The Village Voice

Note: He was mistaken. The song in question was actually "Going Back Home" by Dr. Feelgood. - McD-