Materialistics
Tomorrow Is Fat and Old (Super Secret) Stiv Bators is alive and well and living in Austin. One spin of the Materialistics’ seven-song EP, and you’ll be a believer, too. Lotsa punk bands gnaw the old-school carcass enthusiastically and unabashedly, but too many come off as long-distance tributes that can’t tap the wellspring through all the static. By contrast, the Materialistics’ EP sounds like it could’ve been misplaced in some New York studio vault back in 1977. Guitarist/vocalist Al G. is a Dead Boy born too late. He has Stiv’s petulant, slurred vocal delivery down pat. The trio’s overall musical approach is a cogent amalgam of Dolls, Dead Boys, and Voidoids that warms the cockles like an old furnace in a Lower East Side tenement. Their energy and wit collide most successfully on “Nothing Wrong W/U,” which is a love song defined by the absence of faults as opposed to the presence of positive traits. “Most tramps make me nauseous,” asserts G., “but you’re not no stomach flu.” While the acoustic beginning of “What Hearts Reveal” hints at loftier pop aspirations, the EP ends before this can be explored fully. Whether the Materialistics will stick around long enough to do that remains to be seen, but Tomorrow Is Fat and Old remains promising in its own right.
This article appears in September 12 • 2003.
