Paul Newman
Only Love Will Break Your Heart
Trance Syndicate

On their second full-length release of the year, Paul Newman have not meddled with the formula of their calculated rock much. The guitars (alto and tenor) are still protean, mutating on the silver slide (or maybe the wider black dish) before your very ears, while the protein links of bass and drums separate and recombine to form brand new rhythmic patterns. Suddenly the bombastic riff appears as a catalyst, and an entirely new creature is present before us. But nothing stays static for long.

Compared to Frames Per Second, the layout of the record is pretty much the same. Highly organized patterns of notes loop along, but then blur into more bass-heavy washes. And after about forty minutes of structure falling and then rising anew, the tearing rock sound emerges at the end. Where Empire of Ants once stood, there is now The New Goth. Really though, it is just the new 'rock'.

Copyright © 1999 Andy Beta