coughs

http://www.weshotjr.com/archives/2006/12/
****"stonedranger" says:
"So I'm at this party and it's that weird twilight hour where everyone has that glazed look in their eyes and are staring vacantly at each other from across the room. Things are winding down, the band is loading out, couples are leaving with arms crossed, ready to give each other the silent treatment all the way home. The lights go up in the kitchen and everyone is dispersing from the fridge, stuffing whatever beer they can in their pockets like a bunch of little rats who have somehow scammed cheese from a trap. It's the part of the night I hate, when the desperate and the lonely reveal themselves. And then a horrific sound shatters the silence, the band, the beer thieves, and the couples. Someone puts on a record that is completely the opposite of this pathetic scenario. It's sharp sax bleats, poly-rhythms, and the clicking stabs of percussive guitar noise. Then a tortured shriek and the party starts over at two in the morning, only much improved. It's sounds like Lydia Lunch collaborating with Einstürzende Neubauten, completely potent and toxic. A small group of kids start stomping around the room and yelling all the lyrics out in unison and they're frightening the stragglers. The music is so immediate and vicious, that I swallow my pride and ask someone who it is. "Coughs", I'm told. Don't you love when you ask who a band is and they have some ridiculous name like Coughs? The LP was recorded by rising recording stars, Bill Skibbe and Jessica Ruffins, whose masterful engineering allows the music's sharp edges to bare themselves and cut through all of the bullshit I had to hear this year about how cool it is to be influenced by Bread. This record was a sobering reminder that not all indie rock is the yuppied-out Jetta commercial that publicists, advertisers, and even the bloggers want you to believe it is. "Secret Passage" is the proof that all those yellowing back issues of Forced Exposure, Chemical Imbalance, and Puncture really did predict the future. A lot of the challenging ideas in independent music from the past thirty years still leave much to be explored and this album completely embodied that for me. It helps that every song is pretty much perfect but for that alone, I say it's the best record of the year.":