Woe is Me

Nah.

I'm just fucking with you.

"Whoa!" is me.

Review: Pleas Please Me

Pleas Please Me

The Withers

2011

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I personally know this band. I will do my best to maintain a high degree of neutrality and objectivity in this review. Read: I won't hand out a strangely glowing and impossible 14.9/10 simply because the frontman gave me a ride home. I'll try to be as unbiased as possible.]

"I'm gonna see Agent Orange next week." I said, smiling inside but trying to stay awake at about 6am.
"Oh yeah? I didn't know you liked punk." he responded, with his leather jacket and unkempt appearance.
"Yeah, I like a bit of everything." I yawned, rubbing my eyes.
"Y'know, I'm in a band." he added, with a marked sense of a humble type of self-importance. Or a gentle form of warranted arrogance.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, intrigued and not as sleepy as I was a few minutes prior.
"Yeah, we're THE WITHERS." he said, trying to hide a smirk, and this is where my review starts.

Pleas Please Me is an album by The Withers that I got from Bandcamp after having done some Google searching for their material. As of this writing, it's still free and available. I hesitate in calling it an album because even though it meets the running time for an LP (interchangeably referred to as an album), there's a level of cohesion absent from it that makes me comfortable in calling it such.

One could argue that the absence of cohesion actually serves as a form of cohesion and unity among the songs. And that in itself isn't a very strong argument for much, other than reaching for straws.

That being said, the lack of cohesion actually helps the lo-fi garage rock band sound on this recording. (More on the lo-fi bit later).

Fuck it, let's just call it an album. If not for the sake of truth, then for convenience.

There really isn't a specific theme or set of themes binding the songs together nor does it really matter. Put it this way, the album starts strong with "Someday Dreams." This is a song that has a chorus that chirps: "someday dreams will come true." It's upbeat, catchy, deceptively sweet (without being saccharine), and uplifting without being ham-fisted or annoying. A song like this as an opener would suggest that despite the album cover and title, the rest of the songs would be as uplifting and as cheery. Instead, it only serves to buck expectations.

The next song pulls the listener into a nice, groovy, lull. Still upbeat, still catchy, and fun. "Bloody Red Flowers."

There is, however, a divide after "A B or C" with their cover of "Runaway." It's a solid cover, and one I genuinely prefer to a number of a modern covers of "Runaway." With "Runaway" you get a darker sound, if that makes sense, that comes off as a noticeable if not sharp contrast from the first three songs.

The first three are transparently energetic, upbeat, and alert. After, "Runaway" the songs don't follow any trend and generally do whatever they want without asking for your permission, you square.

"High Fructose Corn Syrup Blues" is more mellowed-out and laidback. "Don't Dig it Up" starts off with a clip of Huell Howser before diving right into raucous gnarly noise. "Shoofly Pie" and "Thin as the Wind" keep things steady and pacing forward with some degree of discipline providing yet another sharp contrast to the almost animalistic ferocity of "Don't Dig it Up", while still keeping in suit with the rest of the album's trend of "Make good noise and have fun" all the way to the aptly-named entitled closer: "The End."

Speaking of noise and contrasts of sound...

The album sounds very scratchy and distorted. By choice. And while it could turn off listeners who are so accustomed to clean sounds, you don't really notice it in subsequent listens. The very lo-fi approach serves as double-edged sword.

The pro to the lo-fi approach on Pleas Please Me is that it makes the band stand out from others who would take a modern approach to recording. It harkens back to an era when you had to be good the first time around, or you would be stuck for multiple takes and sessions until you finally got it right. Plus something about effort and how much of a bitch it can be to record on tape vs digital. It also captures a tenacious spirit of punk rock, garage rock, fun, full-of-heart, "we're in this for the music" authenticity.

The con is that the songs' sound quality suffers and hinders the listening experience. Sounds are muddled, distorted, and could force the listener to decipher the lyrics (half-sung, half-yelled, fully delivered).

The perceived lack of obvious cohesion and thematic content actually helps the sound in terms of defining The Withers (fun, loud, noisy, pretty good), though this album isn't indicative of the band's full potential.

The chorus to the first song perfectly encapsulates the album, and perhaps the band as a whole.

Someday dreams will come true.

7.5/10