This Are Music

People have written tons about them: How they're the ultimate record collector's band, how you're more likely to have heard of them than to have actually heard them, and on and on. One of the greatest quotes was from the liners of their 3CD set Astral Glamour: "their songs display a primary tension between pop hooks and a careening sense of self-sabotage." That about does it. That quote does the best to describe what the appeal is in actually listening to Bruno Wizard and co —which, considering they're a band, you might want to try sometime.

I liken the discovery and first listen of the Homosexuals for me to the first exposure to This Heat, which I suppose isn't a totally unrelated thing. Just as they were prog-as-listenable-art, the Homosexuals were punk as art, and far beyond what most people mean when they say that about some other shittier band. As arty but not as pretentious or angular as Gang of Four. As hook-driven and jangly as TV Personalities but never as precious or angsty. The dub influence is far more authentic and strange than anything about Sandanista!'s pastiche. I suppose an abstract, lo-fi, dub-inflected Chairs Missing/154-era Wire is as good a comparison as any. Bruno's voice even approaches Colin's timbre at times, though never barks and yelps in as quite a punk-like way.

After having passed over the seemingly thousands of out-of-print releases grace the pages of mp3 blogs under seemingly hundreds of different band names, I had a unique first exposure to them which I'll never get with This Heat or classic-period Wire: I saw them live. They played inside Emo's (the tiny part) during SXSW this year, as I believe they did last year, and completely won over a packed house. The crowd was a mix of a few fans, a decent contingent of those who had heard of them, and as with any SXSW show, a lot of random people who thought their name was entertaining. Their buzzing 77-era guitars, tight playing, off-the-charts hooks, and Bruno's impeccable punk elder statesman stage presence all locked together into that slipshod kind of professionalism that only a longtime gigging punk band can have.

When I grabbed the Homosexuals' CD compilation of their first/only record plus some singles (very much in print by ReR, speaking of This Heat), I found all that experimentation, dub atmosphere, and just general weirdness that gave their awesome tunes a dimension that works in your house on your stereo when you don't have the benefit of Bruno in front of your face. "Hearts In Exile" might be one of the most perfect tunes ever made. It's full of hooks but it never quite does what you expect it to do. The album version actually takes the original single and runs it through a complete dub makeover. And the lyrics? Well, they're not entirely inpenetrable, but more evocative than straightforward. Just have a listen.