Parts & Labor, Mapmaker

I wouldn’t have guessed it, I’ll admit — I never figured that NYC noiserockers Parts & Labor could top 2006’s excellent Stay Afraid, much less do it so effortlessly. But here we are with Mapmaker, which truly lives up to its name; with this release, the band has charged off the edge of the musical map as we know it and are busy drawing the boundaries (such as they are) of their own little country, a utopian place where Hüsker Dü stands side-by-side with Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine.

While Stay Afraid was essentially a noise record with some almost-accidental bursts of anthemic brilliance, Mapmaker grabs hold of the promise of tracks like “A Great Divide” and “A Pleasant Stay” and channels all of Parts & Labor’s considerable fury and power into it. The result is an album of roaring, urgent rock anthems that surge and crash on a sea of noisy electronics, guitar feedback, and propulsive, near-frantic drums. The songs on here are like rallying cries for some futuristic tribe of youthful rebels, practically demanding that you pump your fist in the air, stomp your feet on the cracked concrete sidewalk, and howl along. The lyrics evoke some kind of revolution, too, charting a course through a dystopian world where everyone thinks they’re a celebrity, people do whatever they’re told by the talking heads, and reckless leaders drag us through the muck and blood of war.

It’s drummer Chris Weingarten’s almost blast beat-like drumming that drives the pace on tracks like opener “Fractured Skies” or “Vision of Repair,” while BJ Warshaw’s bass comes thundering in overhead like a storm cloud and Dan Friel’s guitar throws down the lightning. The guitars alternate between formless walls of melodic sound and spiraling, scraping lines that wind around the edges of the song itself, dodging in and among the electronics. Friel and Warshaw’s fucked-up synths bubble and crunch, thick and chunky-sounding, and the two trade vocals that bring to mind Bob Mould at his bitterest, with a touch of Poster Children’s Rick Valentin thrown in for good measure.

The Hüsker Dü tag, actually, is the hardest one to escape here. P&L sound like they’re doing their damnedest to evoke New Day Rising on every damn song on Mapmaker, and in so doing get nearer to the Minneapolis trio’s wall-of-noise aesthetic than anybody (and I mean anybody) else who’s tried to fill Hart, Mould, and Norton’s big shoes. With this album, there’s no noise-for-noise’s-sake, thank God, but rather, the band uses the noise, in all its skronking, screaming, blistering glory, and builds some absolutely gorgeous songs out of it. Which, in a way, is exactly what the Hüskers were all about.

The SST connection’s given away, as well, by the inclusion of a Minutemen cover, “King of the Hill,” which fits so perfectly it sounds like it could very well be a Parts & Labor song — the only tell, really, is that the lyrics on most of the Frield/Warshaw/Weingarten-penned songs work better than D. Boon’s (sorry, Minutemen lovers, but there you go). There’s also an abiding love here for the old-school NY art-noise scene that spawned Sonic Youth and Swans, and some subtle nods to ’90s indie-rock acts like Chavez, Slint, MBV, or Tortoise.

For their part, Parts & Labor succeed admirably at welding all those influences together (cracks, holes, jagged bits of metal, and all) into something wholly new. The more I listen to Mapmaker, the more convinced I am that no, I really haven’t ever heard anything quite like this before. Despite owing a debt to the band’s noisy forebears, this is new territory the band’s exploring, one where there’s beauty and hope lurking within the noise, and it leaves me drained, maybe a little shaky, but still exhilarated and in awe.