Don Caballero: Singles breaking up vol. 1

The title of track eight pretty much gives away Don Caballero's boring, rehashed, monotonous formula: "ANDANDANDANDANDANDANDAND." After listening to meaty guitar part after meaty guitar part, drum fill after drum fill, one finds that though this band sets out to be the King Crimson of post-punk-math-rock, it fails disastrously in both good taste and narrative sensibility.

I probably would have thought these guys were wicked cool if they were a local band and I was a freshmen in high school. At that point I would not have wholeheartedly delved into all the good bands this band redoes or rips off: Fugazi, Sonic Youth, Drive Like Jehu, Jesus Lizard, Unsane, Polvo, Die Kreutzen, and countless others.

Don Caballero sets itself apart by having no vocals--but this only highlights the group's stridently boring guitar parts and its overzealous, annoying drummer. If this band did a video it would have to be a 15-minute shot of this guy standing behind his kit, doing roll after roll in a bad parody of a prog-rock nightmare.

In song after song, Don Caballero's guitars struggle--but fail--to escape the drummer's clickety click-roll thwap. Even in the last two tracks, which rip off such late '90s pioneers as Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, and Gastr Del Sol, the guitarists can't get him to shut up. Instead of one continuous fill, he plays a bunch of little broken-up fills
here and there. In the end, Singles Breaking Up Vol. 1 actually sounds a lot like listening to the same old snap, crackle, and pop of breakfast cereal when you have a hangover. (Touch and Go)

--Carl Ehrhardt

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