Record Review - 2 April 09 2003

Q and Not U serves a greater good than the average Washington, D.C., post-hardcore band. Different Damage, the group’s sophomore release, is just as much a lesson in the city’s musical history as it is a dramatic step forward for the Dischord label’s sound. Combining the polyrhythmic “go-go” sound of late-’70s D.C. act Trouble Funk with the intelligent rock of a latter-era Dischord group Regulatorwatts yields a heady and forward-thinking pulse. While the angular guitars of the band’s 2000 debut No Kill No Beep Beep, have been pacified, slick production and drawn-out rhythmic moments add a crystalline, methodical quality to a sound that, like the songwriting, leaves room for the mind to roam.

Throughout “Soft Pyramids” and “No Damage Nocturne,” mechanical rhythms and a stark lack of reverb give the music an artificial quality — not in the sense that Q and Not U isn’t feeling these songs, but in the fey and flawless execution, which makes each number sound too symmetrical for human hands to hold down. The album peaks on the second track, “So Many Animal Calls,” which stutters to life with compact precision.

Throughout Different Damage, layers of percussive rhythm build a solid, unwavering beat that mutates from song to song, but remains steady, binding each track together. These constructs reintroduce a new generation of the D.C. underground to an influence they may be too young to remember, while providing the spark needed to keep things moving along.


Q and Not U plays Eyedrum Thurs., April 10.