Tenement – Predatory Headlights

One of my favorite albums of 2015 is Predatory Headlights, a restlessly inventive double LP by the nonconformist DIY punk group Tenement. About half of Predatory Headlights is made up of heavy-riffing ragers with catchy, melodic choruses — precisely the sort of music that earns Tenement the “pop punk” tag, which the trio’s 27-year-old frontman, Amos Pitsch, despises. The other half of Headlights demonstrates why — it is far more exploratory, veering into haunting piano dirges, extended ambient interludes, and lo-fi junk-store pop tunes that teeter on the brink of sonic disintegration.

In a laudatory review published when Predatory Headlights was released in June, the New York Times acknowledged that many have likened the album to punk’s twin canonical double-LP tentpoles, Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade, Wilco’s being there and Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, and then added a comparison to the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. for good measure. When I suggested that Big Star’s jittery anti-masterpiece Third 1 seemed like a more fitting influence, Pitsch agreed, though the musician he referenced most during an interview earlier this month at his home in Appleton, Wisconsin, was, interestingly, the avant-jazz artist Sun Ra.

This album has it all, alt country, melodic punk, glam, powerpop, lo-fi rock, ambient free jazz etc.. it’s like an expanded blind wink to me. Take a listen, you won’t be sorry.