ATHENS

“What Would We Wear Were We Werewolves 

It is more often than not, sadly, that all art forms—be it music or film—run the inevitable course of the mundane and tire one like last week’s meatloaf, if that is all it does, that is. Enter ATHENS, stage up. Theirs is a brand of music that smacks of creative energy in its boundless approach to birthing a sound that knows countless fathers: the result? A veritable clashing of styles that range from the feral twang of Indian sitars and in true cosmopolitan fashion, injects the tribal bump of somewhere certainly elsewhere. That familiar rock sound is retained and too, does the listener experience a gauntlet of traditional styles like blues. The fluidity that ATHENS applies in synthesizing these very distinct properties is like that of a brilliant (or mad) scientist, hellbent on bringing to life something so strikingly new. The rawness of vocalist resembles a more put-together Isaac Brock (Modest Mouse)—and to this critic’s pleasure—the controlled eccentricity of Les Claypool. Moments on the cd are heightened by the pace of instruments to create suspense invocative of dramatic cinema handled with delicate whimsy. What Would We Wear? proves to be a highly enjoyable and well-orchestrated piece of music that wraps itself up in a 30-minute package, only it begs to come undone and played again and again and again.