At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command

Obnoxious Listeners

We Gave Up on the Radio a Long Time Ago

Search

Album Reviews

Relationship of Command | At the Drive-In

By Dan ⋅ October 7, 2008 ⋅

Email This Post ⋅

Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’m not quite sure why it didn’t occur to me until today to bring up At the Drive-in. Granted, they split up quite some time ago, but that doesn’t mean their music wasn’t great. If for some reason the name doesn’t jog your memory, half of them went to Sparta and the other half went to The Mars Volta upon their split.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t like Acrobatic Tenement (1996) or In Casino Out (1998) as much as Relationship of Command (2000). This is mostly my fault as I hadn’t even heard of them until their single, One-Armed Scissor. Unfortunately, I started with their masterpiece and couldn’t help but compare it to their earlier work. By Relationship of Command, At the Drive-in had solidified their recording process and fully developed their one of a kind sound blending rock, punk, emo, and a hint of experimental (which would be even further explored in The Mars Volta). There isn’t a single track on this album that I don’t love… that’s exactly how a great album should be.

If you’re an Obnoxious Listener and never got into The Mars Volta because you felt they were a little too experimental and off-the-wall, I’d suggest checking out Relationship of Command. At the-Drive provided more well-defined structure to their songs and they didn’t fall into lapses of ambient drones and random noise. On the other hand, I felt like The Mars Volta was more creative because of their stylistic choices, but I’ll leave that post to sway you one way or the other. Everything I just said about the music as a whole from each band pretty much applied to the singer in both bands, Cedric Bixler-Zavala. These two projects made it clear that Cedric knows how to aptly adapt his vocals to the music behind them.

At the Drive-In is a great example of what I mean when I say guitar work is much more impressive when it moves you rather than dazzle you with flash. The guitars have a sound completely distinct from any other band and they don’t fall into one well defined role. I really don’t like guitarists that follow a formulaic course of always using hard rhythms until it’s time to solo. It’s really OK if you’re not strumming when not soloing… it’s just one way we accomplish a little thing called dynamics, and At the Drive-In certainly nailed that right on the head. It becomes a lot easier to accomplish that when you have a spectacular drummer and a prominent bassist that knows his role and when to briefly compromise it.

OK, so maybe At the Drive-In was a little weird, but it’s still structured and hadn’t fallen into to pure ambient art. I think they’d serve as a great gateway into some more obscure forms of rock because they bring small doses of these obscure forms along with great musicianship and composition.

At the Drive-In | MySpace | Wikipedia