Live and Live [tape] (Can. Baby Universe) 1991
[This review was originally published in Badaboom Gramaphone #3 and appears here with permission.]
A Spiny Anteaters album is a whole and complete entity. Parts can be extrapolated, even be held up independently, but to hear a release piecemeal is to not fully understand it. What’s missed is the unifying sense of radically shifting songforms — from layered feedback and distortion to simple, repeating measures, from heavy, plodding beats to elegant, tempered ballads.
The Ottawa quartet’s two early self-released cassettes merit little comment: they are lo-fi rock affairs that only hint at what the group evolved into. All Is Well is their most song-oriented release, with guitars being used mostly to create thick sonic washes within pop structures. As with most of the music, vocals switch between guitarists Andrew Heisz and Ray Bayliss. (The band’s other members are Heisz’s sister Marianne on bass and drummer Cathy Cheshin.)
Current begins with the 17-and-a-half-minute title track, which is actually divided into six parts (the last being a cover of Wire’s “Lowdown”). This is where they begin using distortion and abstraction beyond a highlighting effect. They even go further in this direction on Spiny Anteaters’ Last Supper, where various recording techniques intersect throughout the piece. All the elements from their earlier music remains, but become aspects of a constantly developing repertoire.