The Gravity Suit

Madison band The Suit's triple-charred low end was understandably what people always noticed first. Now boasting a more reasonable two bass players instead of three (and still no dedicated guitar player), it soldiers on as The Gravity Suit. The keyboard leads have always suggested chintzy sci-fi soundtracks, and vocalist-bassist Jamie Rohrbeck's always had this way of delivering his words as if he's grinding gravel against the roof of his mouth. But these elements stick out a little more this time, proving the band's noise-splattered post-punk is even weirder than its abundance of four-string mutilation lets on.

"Conundrum Seat," "Leaving Earth," and the instrumental "Suiture 1 Backrub" key into how warm and flexible the electric bass can sound, especially when matched with drummer Brian Blum's mid-tempo grooves and Sean Pratt's trippy synth lines. Sometimes, though, it's hard to tell one riff from the next: Fun as the bass parts are on "$3,000 Microphone—Milkbone's Albini" and "Feelings And Things," they're just one crude chunk of the general scheme. Bass can be an unwieldy thing, but The Suit played it with much more imagination and energy on its great 2007 split with now-defunct local band Colony Of Watts. The Gravity Suit partially makes up for that with grisly, smart-assed charm. "Green Cheeks" opens with a bloodthirsty Rohrbeck groaning, "It was a dark and stormy night / Some motherfucker came and stole my bike." "Coyotes Are The New Wolves" features him quite literally howling like a scraggly, drunken canid.

There's proof here that the new Suit can be worthy of the old one on its own terms, especially on "I Too Came With Out A Shirt": It begins with a bass-and-keys slug-out then bubbles over with what's either some wacky synth-tweakery or a bunch of discarded sound effects from Ghostbusters II. The Gravity Suit opens up a slight gap in the band's blast-wall and lets other kinds of madness ooze through. The overall sound is as cool as ever and still great fun to see live, but any band as powerful, screwy, and funny as The Suit owes itself a better set of songs and a better-sounding record overall. The transition's not complete yet, but worth following through on.