O Pioneers!!!, Neon Creeps

I can’t think of a decent way to skirt around it, so I’m just going to say it: on their new full-length, Neon Creeps, art-punks O Pioneers!!! truly, seriously remind me of Braid. It’s the distorted-yet-jangly guitars that (thankfully) never veer off into hardcore territory, the odd melodic structures within the songs, and the un-rhymed lyrics, but most of all, it’s singer/guitarist Eric Solomon’s voice. It’s raw and throaty and broken, at times like the voice of Braid “second vocalist” Chris Broach (aka “The Screamy Guy”), and yet it still manages to come off strong and unbowed.

There’s also an odd resemblance here, to my mind, to Irish folk music, both in the jangliness of the sound and in Solomon’s punkish delivery. When he hits his most bitter, roughest moments, I find myself thinking of American Steel’s excellent Destroy Their Future, in that Solomon and American Steel frontman Rory Henderson both sing with voices that sound smoke-scarred and desperate, almost with a bit of a folk lilt to the phrasing of it all.

And when it gets to the lyrics, the Braid comparisons go out the window. No Midwest melancholy here, but rather harsh, bitter musings and defiant fuck-yous to the world at large and Houston in specific. In a way, Neon Creeps almost reads like a 10-song love/hate letter to our not-so-fair metropolis, with its constantly shifting landscape and isolated, self-involved people; there’s a lot of anger here, but it’s anger less at The City itself and more at the forces that make and remake it every fucking year in a never-ending quest for more, bigger, faster, louder, newer. And hey, that’s Houston in a nutshell, right there.

As the title probably indicates all by itself, “Dead City Sound” is pretty much the model track for this feeling, with Solomon railing against a city that “eats its history, and sometimes its young,” but it’s not all negative — there’s a big “sometimes” in there, letting slip that even in his bitter fury, he does still love the place. In fact, that makes it harder; what could be worse than having to watch as something you love gets ripped apart and refashioned every three months? It helps, too, that the song’s probably the catchiest damn thing on here, with a fist-pumping chorus and cut-loose break that makes me howl along every single time the track comes on.

Viewing Neon Creeps as an auditory diary of life in this place, it all makes a crazy kind of sense. Solomon grapples with the day-to-day job routines and stresses (“9 A.M. Everyday,” “Stressing The Fuck Out,” “I Have a Major Weightlifting Problem”), tries to get past all the self-doubt and second-guessing we all, every single one of us, sometimes find surging up and out of our gut (“My Life as a Morrissey Song”), deals with friends and ex-friends who can’t see past themselves (“Saved By The Bell Was a Super Good Show,” “Chris Ryan Added Me on Facebook”), and gives the finger to know-nothing elitists who try to control the scene we all love (“Cool Kid City”). The album’s the story of his life, and to an extent, of yours and mine, too. And it’s pretty freaking beautiful for that.

I should note, by the way, that Neon Creeps represents a big, big step up for the band; while I liked 2007’s Black Mambas, it always felt chaotic and messy. Creeps, on the other hand, is raw yet focused, tight enough to hold together but loose enough to rock. Which is a little surprising, considering that the songs were written and recorded with three different incarnations of the band over the span of two years, but it’s true. The guitars jangle like they always did, but now they’re locked, loaded, and aimed right at your head, deadly serious and intent. And while Solomon’s lyrics sound like he’s a man in search of something, he delivers like he knows exactly what he’s doing.