Records: Sunday Puncher's Do-Over/Jury Duty 7"

By Carl Ehrhardt

Sunday Puncher's seven-inch jerks and heaves like a child in an epilectic fit. "Do-Over," the A-side, takes a playground chant's melody, pulls its hair, and stamps on its feet. In the heat of afternoon recess, the schoolboy overdoses.

Formed at Yale in 1995, Sunday Puncher takes its name from the Saturday night prizefighter who is still standing in the wee hours of the morning. Such is the condition of the band's music: punishing and punished, lurching with the force of steel.

"I call do-over!" cries the singer as the song drops from an elusive, dizzying spell of calm into a hardcore tantrum, while the manic rhythms of this childhood ritual deny him the chance to play. The drums in both the "happy" intro and the traumatic chorus play like an assembly line, shifting the listener to a new scene before he can cope with the first.

What makes Sunday Puncher an interesting rock band is the way it squeezes raw, visceral, human content into robotic, inhuman forms. There are none of the usual snare hits on two and four, and the guitar sound is angular and mechanical. The song structure of "Do-Over" fits within an abstract frame rather than a simple song progression.

Puncher's B-side, "Jury Duty," begins with a sliding, mangled wreck of a guitar line and a brutal beat that drags the two, four, and everything else along with it. This time around, the song's protagonist is lost in a drowsy chorus of reverse syncopation, which explodes in a sudden finale of squealing steel strings and popping snares.

A meditation on the sweaty confusion of childhood socialization, this record's abstract dynamics and exposition exhibit Puncher's best artistic tendencies. And for those who consider guitars and drums as versatile as computers and paintbrushes, it will not fail to intrigue. (Turnbuckle)

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