o approximate the uneasy, eerie, downright fucking disturbing feeling that pervades most of No Silver/No Gold, the first full-length from Denton, TX, boys The Baptist Generals, you might try sitting naked in a stainless steel room running a cheese grater over rocks for a few hours, your eyes constantly open, with the repetitive, bony piano line from Eyes Wide Shut playing incessantly. It’s like stumbling into a room of guitar playing, Busch-whacked high school kids playing Dungeons and Dragons and plotting a kidnapping. (Other possible situations akin to the hearing of this album would include road trips to the dentist in the trunk of car, knocking a chimney over on a neighbor’s cat, and traffic.) All of which makes No Silver/No Gold a fascinating listen.


Although the sort of raw, gritty, and awkwardly fragile hurt country rock here is not uncommon in a land where Will Oldham records albums during evening news commercial breaks, there is such tangible anguish felt in raucous songs like “Alcohol (Turn and Fall)” and “St. Christopher’s Medal” that you can’t help but get angry with them. It’s weird the things you’ll consider doing when the music you’re listening to is so lucidly provocative and disquieting. “Creeper“, for example, is the soundtrack to drowning pigs; “On a Wheel“ for bringing the carcass into the basement. Let’s see “New Partner” do that.Which makes it even more astonishing when the band loosens up. Once their pants come off for the gorgeous strum-strum haze of “Going Back Song,” you can relax. All is not despair. You weren’t really going to drown that pig, anyway. “Preservatine,” jaunty and euphoric as it is, will make you forget bacon entirely.


Only you can’t forget bacon because there is something here more powerful than it: low fidelity. Not the often baffling lyrics (“My brothers keep a log of hope“), Chris Flemmons’ screechy, zombie--Neil Young vocals, not the scathing guitars or crotchety drums, no not even bacon, can prevent low fidelity from taking center stage. 4-track burn marks and seething crackle own this record and give it its gruff sheen, providing the band its character. It takes the affable songs and makes them shady. After some digital malfunction mars the end of the spook-pretty inverse lullaby, “Ay Distress,” Flemmons goes apeshit, knocking things around, swearing like a loon in an alley. It’s unruly, bizarre, and sublimely trainwreck-like. Without the layer of rumbling tape grime and rough imperfections, though, the album‘s rage lacks potency. Flemmons’ madness needs the surrounding noise chaos to be completely realized, using it to build to the album‘s rusty backbone.


And because of it, even though there are bits of singular goodness scattered throughout (“Going Back Song” has ‘Summer Mix’ written all over it), No Sliver/No Gold demands you wrestle it as a cagey whole. It is indeed an unsettling record at times, aural Gummo for professional types with a penchant for drink and clenching toothpicks between their teeth. But with a little effort and the desire for an off-key expression of your occasional internal rage towards pigs, it works well enough.