Water Damage

Water Damage were always destined to be veterans. It’s not only that its members are themselves veterans of a daunting roll call of groups, but that this particular juggernaut was born to birth a solid-to-the-core set of dispatches. The four performances that make up Repair rank among their best. The m.o. of listing their track titles “Reel 45,” “Reel 38,” etc. now registers as a clearsighted, long-game approach and a wise sidestepping to the nuisance and potential for distraction of giving these workouts programmatic titles. They’ll tell us the order in which they were laid down, but what else do you really need to know in advance?

Because “in advance” with Water Damage seems largely irrelevant. It’s what happens when the sticks are clicked and the band lurches into gear, whether ten players or twice that number. In the case of Repair, it’s an even ten plus simpatico pals Wendy Eisenberg and Ricardo Dias Gomes.

Repair what? Repair to where? Reel 45 charges out of the gate at what you might imagine to be peak intensity. But not yet. A frenetic beating of the traps—no slow burn here—becomes a mutated thrash beat and summons Mari Maurice’s Shepard tone-ish climb. Cymbals swell, everybody join in, safe to call it one of the group’s new high water marks. Also sounds like they’ve been doing cardio. Where do you go after that? Reel 38 is boppy garage rock with sneaky cellular subdivision, a splinter group let loose inside the broader band. Fiddle appropriately takes the wheel. Reel 43 tips its hat to the Stooges’ “Down On The Street,” sharpening that guitar msound and sounding awfully spry in the process—a big dog of a band mauling a classic of swagger. Reel 41 refocuses to some kind of Water Damage golden mean, sad that an LP sideM can’t last a full hour. I’m left readier than ever to see these geniuses again shoehorn themselves onto a stage. —David Grubbs