Downtown tales

The good and the ill of Skeleton Key

by Carly Carioli

I know I'm supposed to like Skeleton Key, a band of "four New York downtown dwellers" who sound like a cross between Cop Shoot Cop and Jawbox, and who are getting the big push from Capitol Records. They're a tweak away from standard guitar-drums-bass: one guy bangs on "found objects." They "delight in trying to find beauty in the garbage," as bassist/singer Eric Sanko told Billboard columnist/editor-in-chief Timothy White, who went on to compare Skeleton Key's full-length debut, Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon, to ancient Assyria. The promotional material on Skeleton Key makes pointed reference to their downtown New York lineage, and to their allegedly dark, disturbing subject matter and "intricate character sketches." You know: scared stiffs, open wounds, bummed-out clowns -- right up the alley of former metal junkies who'd like to think they've moved on to more intelligent post-alternative platters.

The problem with downtown New York dwellers (and the problem with Skeleton Key) is that they like their trash wrapped in diplomas -- when they hear about downward spirals they think how nice one would look in their loft. It has proven all too easy to seduce critics and suburbanites with the downtown New York myth of glorified decadence and avant-garde weirdness for weirdness' sake; sanitized (or at least stylized) suffering puts asses in cushiony, high-priced Broadway seats and dim-lit dives alike. Which makes it a no-brainer that Skeleton Key's Knitting Factory background, warped arrangements, and unpolluted modern-pop appeal would be misread as a mandate from the basement-dwelling indie-core hipoisie: avant-garde for people who find the avant-garde a bit too, uh, avant-garde. Literate morbidity for the Times Literary Supplement set.

Meanwhile, the same people who dismiss populist, straightforward, bottom-dwelling sleaze like Marilyn Manson will find themselves falling hook-line-and-sinker for songs like Fantastic Spikes' "The World's Most Famous Undertaker" -- one of those "intimate character sketches," though other people might mistake it for a plotless description or maybe a video treatment. For my money, it reads like Cannibal Corpse with a better thesaurus: "Transparent skin, one cloudy eye/The immobile frame underneath the crown of flies/It salivates, small yellow teeth . . . Black brittle bones draw back the lips/10 spiny cones at the end/Its fingertips."

Not bad, but also not all that exciting. And though there aren't many bands who'll fit "undulating" into a song (from "Watch the Fat Man Swing"), the language just gets more heavy-handed and self-indulgent. "Dear Reader" suggests how self-indulgent just by its title. "The Only Useful Word" is the capper: "Nouns are worthless/Laughed at by the verbs/Erase the names/The tense has changed." Is this some kind of plot from the creators of Schoolhouse Rock?

Skeleton Key spend half the album trying to convince you how eclectic they are -- eclecticism being another one of those useless downtown delusions of grandeur -- and come off as dabblers. Like a bad Butter 08 impersonation, they take a nick at blaxploitation ("All the Things I've Lost") and full-on hardcore ("Vomit Ascot"). But the latter's merely rote, and the former comes off just awful, sounding painfully close to another misguided attempt at streetwise, darkside "funk": Extreme's Pornograffitti. And that's a bad, baaaaad thing.

Thing is, for all their faults, Skeleton Key are a long way from sucking. Like Helmet's Meantime and White Zombie's Astro-Creep 2000 in their times, Fantastic Spikes feels very of-the-moment, kinetic and bleak, sketchy and soaring. When they quit trying to prove how enigmatic and postmodern they can be, they're toothy and blistering, all hotblooded menace with melodies that redeem their souls right out of the flames, streamlined harmony placating rough-edged organic (as in, no sampler) industrial ruckus, weird hisses and tape loops going thump in the night, some damaged cartoon samples, and carnival accordions thrown in for good spooky measure.

Even though "Wide Open" is just Tool with an art-school degree, it's good art-Tool -- ricochet percussion, steep guttural bass lines burgeoning up from the plumbing, a chorus like a fallen angel's lament and twice as pretty. "Undertaker" and "Scratch" practically reinvent funk-metal on the spot, with Big Black in their back pockets and angular hooks up their sleeves.

Listening to those songs, you can hear that Skeleton Key are talented heavy-rock stylists -- loud and accessible enough to hit the Korn kids upside the head and, if the press buzz sticks, "eclectic" enough to appeal to the collegiate indie cabal. I dunno, maybe that makes them the Faith No More of the late '90s, or the next Girls Against Boys. But if they're gonna insist on playing art-rock debutantes and flaunting their vocabulary, I'll take a pass.

Skeleton Key play the Middle East next Thursday, June 5. Call 497-0576.