Public Strain

If you're not quite there by the time six-and-a-half minute opus Eyesore encapsulates everything that's been wonderful about the preceding 36 before slowly fading out, turn it over and start again. It's worth it, because Public Strain is one of 2010's finest LPs.

Sounds come and go but the inspiration and wherewithal to realize your own goal in tone is paramount. Women seem to know exactly what they stand for and in presenting it they've entirely outdone themselves, again.

Public Strain improves on Women in every way, which is no small feat. It's 13 minutes long than its predecessor, but Women doesn't use the extra time to spread out. The band keeps the tension up by building the various lean sounds of that record into new, more muscular variations.

In short, it's a triumph. Yes, it's still messy, and yes, Patrick Flegel's apathetic nasal vocals are too saturated, or buried in the mix, or both, but the intricate musicianship and songwriting take this from "yet another lo-fi garage album" to mini masterpiece.

It feels self-contained, wholly its own, and this is what allows it to hold up such a pristine and vast mirror to the scenes that surround it.

The fidelity hasn't improved much from the Calgary foursome's basement-recorded debut, but Public Strain consolidates the clanging drones and subtly hooky flourishes that previously existed only as separate pieces.

Public Strain feels stripped-down, simpler, and lolloping. It's not so eerie.

Women write songs, but they tease us by keeping them hidden, interspersing the teeniest seconds of dazzling clarity with cool sounding sonic murk. And credit to returning producer Chan VanGaalen for whipping up an ambience as dense and seductive as that sepia blizzard on the front sleeve. His proteges are writing good songs, but it's not so much a production job as a sleight of hand trick--VanGaalan stops you from seeing Women's full workings.

The emotional impact of this music is sometimes disorientating or alienating, but that is probably the intention. It's mostly impossible to discern the lyrics or comprehend their themes. Somehow this doesn't matter, given the striking, weird and often turbulent music beneath.

Public Strain is an album that invites you in and lets you at least stay for tea.

At the surface, the temperature is icy. But like a cold lake's waters, the music of Public Strain becomes less drastic; comforting even, given time.

At first listen, Public Strain is impenetrably cold. But deep down, beneath the blizzard of noise and hiss, something's burning.

Never willfully ramshackle or unfocused, Women tread the line between discord and delight with deceptive style. [Sep 2010, p.96]

The results will probably not prove a tremendous cash cow, but theirs is a commendably original aesthetic, and theirs is an enigma you resolve to crack. [Oct 2010, p.114]

Public Strain evokes such questions about genre and instrumentation, recalling heavy hitters like late-period Sonic Youth. But, don't take them for imitators. What the men of Women are crafting is all their own--guitars strung over an abyss.

Women's last record had poppier, brighter aspects than Public Strain, and it's hard to imagine what they might add to this sound beyond an amp'd up production that would wreck their very deliberate effect.

This one's also wonderfully textured--distant samples, squeaky kick pedals, rattling snares, the guitars and vocals in a reverb fight, instrument cables in need of soldering....If that sounds like your kind of (fizzle and) pop, you know what to do. [Fall 2010, p.69]

Public Strain is front-loaded with some of the more patience-testing tunes, but stick with it to discover some astonishing beauties.