Review: Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'Triptych'
The third album by Jon Chapple's post-Mclusky band is the first one produced with his new Australian version of "Shooting at Unarmed Men": he moved to Melbourne in 2006 and decided to recruit a new band and just keep going with the project. I can't say I notice much of a difference except that this is probably SAUM's best album yet, though it's still not going to garner the sort of critical acclaim of Future of the Left's 'Curses', in part due to it's quirky nature and in part due to it being a triple mini-album.
They apparently considered releasing it as three separate EPs but instead we get three CDs totalling almost an hour between them. They're presented in a rather nice sturdy foldout cardboard case in black and creamy white with a sort of classical feel to it. I found it a little tricky to slide CDs one and three from their sleeves without ripping the cardboard but this is only a small consideration and shouldn't affect you unless you're in too big a rush to play the damn thing.
Disc's one and two both have four tracks while disc three has a fifth bonus track after a block of silence. The first disc goes for a short and punchy feel and sounds most like the band's debut album, while the other two are longer; the first two discs both have long extended final tracks while the third disc just has about five minutes of silence before the bonus track kicks in. There are a couple of stand out tracks, notably '____________' (that's 12 dashes, the single, 'Sometimes the Best Thing You Can Do is Die' and 'Sailing Keeps You Safe'. On the other end of the scale is the long extended noise of 'Full Proof Plan for Successful Living' that closes disc two, drawing comparisons with Sonic Youth's more jammed out moments.
Obviously the three-disc nature of the album is lost slightly on MP3 though the flow is still there and I experimented a bit with swapping the tracks around. I actually found that to play the tracks in number order from each disc, i.e. all the first tracks, then all the second tracks, and so on, worked well also. If you liked the first two Shooting at Unarmed Men albums or even if you liked some of them but found it hard to really get excited then I'd definitely recommend getting hold of this. It's available on import from Australia now but should be out on Too Pure here in the UK before too much longer.
Web links:
http://www.shootingatunarmedmen.com
http://www.toopure.com