KNTRLR: Earl Strange (Goodnight, fall 2013)
It’s an age-old story: 1980s child actor turned drummer meets seminary-school dropout in a Russian bath house; they witness a man getting stabbed outside their practice space; they write a few songs. Well, maybe it isn’t the most conventional story, but the eccentricities of Brooklyn-based duo KNTRLR’s origin story shine through in its work — not in an inaccessible/experimental kind of way, but with an artfully blended approach.
The group’s new single, “Stabs” — the aforementioned post-stabbing song that will be on the group’s new album — was also written as a hymn to the eventual Earth-destroying expansion of the Sun, to be sung by the narrator of Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol, echoing the poem’s most famous line: “Each man kills the thing he loves.” On top of that, the track is driven by the familiar splats of a Roland TR-909 and a bevy of reverberating synth and guitar sounds. It seems like it would be too much — over-conceptualized and indigestible — but it’s not. Instead, “Stabs” comes off as a heartfelt ballad with a solid melody and just enough use of the effects bank to make for an engulfing headphones experience.