Watery Love

Decorative Feeling (2014)

Alex Ward

Watery Love's Decorative Feeling sounds like a half-shackled lunatic making his way through a swamp on a cloudy February afternoon, screaming about 20 year-old mundane memories as if they just happened.

The debut LP has just nine songs and lasts a little over a half hour, but it’s just the right serving of clear-headed musical insanity that could get these guys some serious hype. Decorative Feeling starts off with “Dose the Host,” a midtempo, talky introduction, leading up to some Stooges-esque shouts, and then it’s yelling for almost the rest of the album. The guitars are nothing but treble, but it works, seeping into all of the other instruments, enhancing them, fueling them, pumping synthetic oil into this psychotic bionic organism’s veins.

The vocals are a lazy drawl, and yes, you can actually understand every stupid thing the singer has to say. But as stupid as the lyrics might be, they’re utterly hilarious and embarrassingly relatable. I particularly identified with the “Only Love,” which includes the tattoo-worthy line: “You don’t love me, you only love the dog.” How many of us out here have only stayed with someone because we loved their dog? It’s real, and it’s not important, but we don’t get enough of that attitude in punk records anymore. It’s like they don’t know any better and they don’t care. In the last track, “Face The Door,” the vocalist relents, “Unlike you dickheads / I welcome death.” Somehow, the trivial phrasing and the juvenile insult don’t detract from the weight of the song, tricking the listener into backing that line one hundred percent.

One of the most admirable things about this release is its sharply consistent aesthetic. Every song sounds like a Watery Love song; the songs actually sound like whatever “watery love” is. And this goes beyond the music alone; the song titles are some of the best I’ve seen in a while, featuring hits like “Pump the Bimbo,” “Competing Odors,” and “Piece of Piss.” They’re abstract and irreverent yet direct and tangible and filthy.

Watery Love’s “Decorative Feeding” is one of the easiest punk records of 2014. You can slurp it right down. It’s not a wedding cake, but it’s a Swiss Cake Roll. It’s way cheaper, and it’s not as rich or refined, but it’s just as good, and you can’t help but eating them. .