On
Television Man,
Naomi Punk double down on their meta approach. Where they reconfigured their Pacific Northwest influences on
The Feeling, here it feels like they're cutting and pasting their debut album into ever more reflexive collages of collapsing riffs and drums, distant, howling vocals, and spacy interludes. "Linoleum Tryst #19" reworks the former B-side "Linoleum Tryst," taking it even deeper into dirge territory, while the lunging title track resembles a sped-up version of "Trashworld" that sets that song's eeriness on fire with a simple tempo change. "Eon of Pain"'s name feels like a funhouse mirror twin of
The Feeling's "Eon of Love," and "Song Factory" is an apt description of the modular quality that ratchets up
Naomi Punk's claustrophobic tension with each song. Of course, this album isn't an exact copy of
The Feeling;
Television Man's cleaner production lifts some of the fog that gave the band's debut a certain woozy charm, replacing it with a more focused, and often grimmer, approach. Even more nimble tracks like album opener "Firehose Face" have a darker cast, with impending doom implied in the way the instruments fall in on themselves; more typical is "Rodeo Trash Pit," where slight shifts in its repetition help delineate its eight minutes of ominous sludge. Here and on the lumbering "Eleven Inches" -- a prime example of how
Naomi Punk subvert their music's anthemic power by leaving their words indistinct -- the band is louder, yet more elusive, than ever. While
The Feeling's playfulness is missed, on
Television Man Naomi Punk are a more singular, more insular act, and their cerebral approach to visceral sounds is still fascinating, if perhaps a shade less novel than before. ~ Heather Phares
