Raving a Frustration with Tyvek

It’s hard to keep track of the release that Tyvek have been shilling out over the better part of the aughties. Each single seems to be dispensed from some disparate, tiny imprint and only in sparse numbers. And oddly enough, last year’s Fast Metabolism, which I understood to be a full length, is only considered an extended single, by the band. Either way, that disc clocks in at about twenty five minutes where Tyvek’s first proper (?) full length, a self titled affair on Siltbreeze, is just ten minutes longer. It doesn’t matter since both are pretty decent even if ten years on it’s a distinct possibility that no one will recall any of this.

What is worth pointing out – if it wasn’t difficult enough to form some sort of mental discography – is the fact that more than few songs from this self titled album have been culled from previous releases. So when front man Kevin Boyer says, “I just wanted to do an album that was different from the singles and didn't sound like a bunch of singles strung together. I wanted it to be an LP that sounded like a real LP,” I feel confused. Regardless of that, though, one of the most enjoyable tracks from Fast Metabolism gets reworked for inclusion here. The re-recorded track, “Frustration Rock,” doesn’t have the same kind of aggressive sheen to it that its forbearer did. A good song is a good song, though.

But perhaps, part of what Boyer is referring to when he said he wanted something that sounded like a real album is the fact that there are no less than five instrumental tracks here. Unfortunately, four of them are the same song, placed sporadically through out the album in some weirdo maneuvering to create something akin to Phases and Stages from Willie Nelson (admittedly, this was probably not Tyvek’s perception, but I really like Willie’s guitar playing). Unlike those truncated repeats, “CVS Card,” which clocks in at over two minutes, uses one of the sloppiest drum beats in recorded history to push forward a few guitars that sound as if they’re fighting to the death. The eventual winner is, of course, the listener. And while this track comes pretty close to the conclusion of the album, by the time a listener gets this far, it’s clear that Tyvek has in fact come up with a real album.

By proper music industry standards, this is a hap dash, abrasive mix of punk, garage, retreads and blaring noise. But in a time when it seems more and more difficult to make a dollar off of a recording, Tyvek and Siltbreeze will assuredly sell off every copy of this disc to collector nerds. It could easily be coupled with that aforementioned Fast Metabolism to form some primordial statement of what this band was doing at (hopefully) the beginning of its career. And on the strength of this Self Titled disc, it can be safely assumed that these folks – no matter if there’re three, four or five members touring – are gonna keep cranking out these trebley, punk rave ups.