This Heat-Deceit

For Fans of: that feeling inside of you when you know that you've done something wrong and you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, waking up and not being able to move your body as you freak out about the existential implications of willing oneself to move without any response, the anxiety induced by that fact that at any moment the world could be destroyed by nuclear arms, your right hand cutting off your left hand if it should dishonor you.

This Heat is one of the most fascinating bands I've ever come upon, if only because it is such a struggle to describe their style to others. I've often seen them called a mix between krautrock and post-punk, but I find that description lacking. They are very much krautrock by the fact that I could imagine that the band started after the members took acid and then one guy said, "Want to see my new synth? I can't play it very well but I really love it," but very unlike krautrock since they lack any songs longer than Freebird and that the band lacks krauts. The post-punk comparison is even less apt, they are only post-punk by the fact that they sound sort of like a weird punk band and that I'm fairly certain that these gentlemen would be no fun at parties.

So what is This Heat then? Sure, it's a trio of Englishmen who listened to a lot of Can and decided to write unsettling songs that seem vague political, but they're also close to being a vocal pop group (listen to to the first song "Sleep" and tell me I'm wrong) and something even resembling a harsher version of jangle pop (check that guitar work on SPQR). The song Shrinkwrap even experiments with some audio splicing and sampling. It's an album that is deft at combining the sacred and the profane, heavy handed political sentiments with obfuscating language, pop-sensibilities with post-punk experimentation. Indeed, this album is cognitive dissonance personified.

Bottom Line: This Heat were not just a band that was ahead of their time, they are a band that is ahead of our time, the proper era of This Heat remains in a distant future where punk is once again a fluid expression of young rage instead of homogenized chords and a scream, where the desire to spread a message does not draw focus away from the music. This album is one of my favorites and it still baffles me because of how poorly I can describe it with the existing musical vocabulary. This Heat may someday inspire an entirely new musical vocabulary, just for the purpose of self-description.