Ten Kens "Refined"

Ten Kens are from Toronto, so odds are they'll be indie-famous after their record comes out, because it's pretty solid through and through, has memorable tunes and a definite dramatic flair that should find a hook with a lot of current indie dudes. At this point, though, the band is still in that pre-promotional phase where all that exists, more or less, is their music. That leaves those who would like to write about them with fewer options, often resulting in either inscrutable prose and/or mixed genre prose, or the perhaps lazier and certainly more fun method of talking about the band essentially in terms of who it sounds like (cf. this review and its sequel, this review). So how's this: "Bearfight" is a shouty, dramatic Arcade Fire-style anthem and "Y'all Come Back Now" is Modest Mouse-ish-esque jabbery indie-redneck wank. But the standout track is the third one, called "Refined" (mp3). It's the record's one lacuna of dark, brooding hipster melancholia, and it starts out appropriately mid-tempo; an echo-laden guitar, rumbling drums and organ and a tradeoff between pained, melismatic, nearly plangent voices put forth somehthing that sounds like a more narco-fied Clinic. But the structure soon reveals itself at about the 1:15 mark, when the song enters its second phase. It's an inherently theatrical move, but it's not a surprise or anything. The song winds up on a dynamic ledge pretty far above where they were at the start, and the voices turn to screams as the rhythm turns to a rumble, and this leads to a frenzied, voiceless metal outro that, actually, recalls a gothier Queens of the Stone Age (not that that's a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination). And it just sails off from there, no return to anything, like they recorded it live in one take and just said "and.....now" at some point and decided to end the song instead of bringing it full-circle. And yeah, that's what I'll do now too.



Ten Kens' Myspace.