Tera Melos

Tera Melos: “Party With Tina“

from Complex Full of Phantoms (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

math team dropout semiprog skaterboogie//Out Nov. 6

(orig. published early Nov. 2007)               

Complex Full of Phantoms is a rolling duplex, a split CD, shared by two speedy, punk-metally, secretly (but only somewhat) mellow, mostly instrumental rock bands, By the End of Tonight and Tera Melos. This crib is a little bigger inside than out, and here come the warm gulls, spilling sunlight and other things through the broken skylight, onto the night crew, working forklifts and small trucks overtime, racing around like brownies in Mom’s big mixing bowl. Gracious, it’s spacious, a veritable warehouse in here (later for your jailhouse and garage rock; how quaint). But not too much echo, just enough room for corrugated textures and gnarred shards to sound off, three, four (yes, they’re organized, but not agonized about it, or anything).

Oh, they’ve been around: on “Ghost Boat, “ the bulrushes part to reveal an actual voice, of a child apparently, asking an adult to “Tell me one.” The solid, Ward Cleaver-ish, but slightly shy guy replies, “They’re not the kind of stories you can tell.” “Too dirty?” “Well, I guess they’re dirty enough, if only incidentally. Mainly, they’re angry, sensitive, tensely felt, and that dirtiest of all dirty words…” Oh, but all that’s By The End of Tonight, sorree! Is he speaking for Tera Melos too?

Well yeah, judging by the  brooding, on the sly and the fly, of (relatively wordier, relatively proggier) Tera Melos’s “Party With Tina,” in which the rattling, “look what I can do!”  curtains occasionally allow a single, bumpkin-y pause to stick its gooseneck out, from the frustration behind the whole show here; somebody sums up, “I’ll go back, I’ll go back, I’ll go back (mention of “the backseat” flies by)…and I’ll play and I’ll play and I’ll play, but it’s not workin’ out.” Of course, the present tense slips back in at the end, and adds a reminder: “Learn to use your discretion, over time, oh, ho-ho-ho.” How adult to find humor in the time-trap, as “ I’ll play and I’ll play…” marches up yet again. But better yet, get that love-loop squished, so strumpets’ trumpets can strut through a glimpse of Penny Lane, down the hurricane drain into---what?

What goes something like this: “When Worms Learn to Fly” sure might be a wedding rehearsal gone terribly wrong, judging by the way that cellophane cellphone organ is spinning; “Melody 9” quietly absorbs birdy sounds into palmprints, while each floating touchdown results in twice as high and sensitive liftoffs: “All that was left of you, and the day had to cruise…” oooh-oooh: a tiny bit “so what” there, toward the end. Concluding “Last Smile For Jaron” keeps getting grudge tickets to pass muster, as for instance a crowning crescendo meets Mom’s beaters, and meringue appears. Oh, but for the paid-for cool of preoccupied solitude and maybe foresight, in hindsight, before life’s messy details unfold too out of hand---go back to “Tina” again, that drain’s got brain enough, ditto time! (See, because Tera Melos get a little long-winded eventually).

By the End of Tonight: Beaver. Tera Melos: Wally. Six tracks of Little Bro, five of Big: about right.