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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Brick Layer Cake was the project of drummer Todd Trainer, a veteran of Chicagos avant-rock scene who had already served in Breaking Circus, occasionally in Flour, and would later play with Rifle Sport and Shellac.
The first EP, Eye For An Eye (Ruthless, 1990), is actually played solely by him. The surreal chants of this record betray a strong Syd Barrett influence (Happy Hour), but with a strong dose of autobiographical pathos (Winter Park). The theme of his music becomes clearer with the depressing second EP, Call It A Day (Touch And Go, 1992). To assist him are Gerard Boissy, who was also in the last lineup of Rifle Sport, and producer Brian Paulson. My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr inspire him to create long druggy deliriums like Sitting Pretty, but Trainer can do more, managing to secrete neurosis and fear from a ballad for solo guitar like Kiss Of Death Killer and shading the record into the nightmarish atmosphere of Execution, played in slow motion, overflowing with anguish. Trainer establishes himself among the masters of the new American psychedelia with a format that is essentially a horribly deformed psychedelic ballad. But this time the format really is that of a ballad, complete with (moving and horrifying) stories and melody. This sub-emotional and subconscious style, which narrates moral devastation in the tone of a heroin addict at his last gasp, is even more chilling on the album Tragedy-Tragedy (Touch & Go, 1994). The sound proceeds through slow pulses and stunning distortions, yet it is never languid and never anemic; as if the lethargic pop of Codeine had been injected with the gene for doom metal (Christ and Cold Day In Hell are Trainers stations of the cross), or as if a southern boogie had been slowed inside a heroin vision (Gone Today). Trainers perverse baritone raves over these long, sinuous spirals of harsh chords, lowering his tone to a mere whisper in Reach Me Now, with the hypnotic drum beats almost always in the foreground and a background guitar clamor that brushes up against chaos (Thirteenth Drink). Obsessed with the theme of death, both at the individual level (hyper-realistically linked to the two plagues of his era, drugs and AIDS) and at the global level (in a sort of Christian apocalypse), Trainer is in his own way a tragic poet like Nick Cave, but drowned in the crumbling harmony of post-rock.
Trainer played all instruments on Brick Layer Cake's second full-length,
Whatchamacallit (Touch & Go, 2002).
The album is a dark and nightmarish descent into his personal hell.
The spoken-word porno-raving of Stars
is oddly reminiscent of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and of
Patti Smith's mad crescendos.
A similar, disturbing soliloquy occurs in the title-track.
A Black Sabbath-ian riff echoes in the background of Softie, as he
as mental processes come to a standstill and Trainer seems drifting into a
heroin overdose.
The same, "stoned" paralysis deflates The Wedding.
The protagonist is torn between evil and good, between extreme decadence
and noble salvation.
The demonic element pervades the sick hypnosis of What's Her Face,
while the sorrowful, damned tone of Heaven To The Oven that closes
the album sounds like a desperate attempt to get hold of himself.
In Once Upon A Skin the guitar takes over the melodic/guiding role
that the voice refuses to fill and its Hendrix-ian evolutions paint
a picture of sheer neurosis. It is the most "musical" moment of the album.
Powerful and scary, Brick Layer Cake's music is music for the lonely psycho
as he grapples with his suicidal tendencies.
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