For some, If I Kill This Thing We’re All Going to Eat for A Week will be a good, sweet, meek and jam-packed thing. Fans of Nate Mendel will say it’s good he’s left his 20-year alma mater for something new, but we shouldn’t care; this isn’t a departure, or a coming-of-age rite. Word about town is If I Kill This Thing is a spotlight wrenched from Dave Grohl, which is doubtful, but it if it is, it’s not even pointed at the guy who’s meant to be singing. He’s not killing his own emotional doppelgänger to liberate the superego; Mendel’s a dusty relic of the post-emo era now a little less dusty.
In Belle Epoque, Mendel channels James Mercer with his verse-end diving-board sighs (they’re sort of wails in his interpretation), and sounds like he’s relieved he gets to stop singing for a bit. IIKTT may not be a symbol for a bunch of different cosmic dramas, but it’s certainly a tour of the times rock was up its own arse a bit too much. Mendel’s melodies meander just the way music geeks will like, though. He’s gone for the toughest crowd, those wild ones that sit hoping, praying for a modulation or key change to relieve some deviant erotic desire, and it’s hard to know if his music is disjointed and apologetic by design, or whether he was always like that.
If you like silent types who seem to regret themselves ontologically, the cutesy aspect of If I Kill This Thing will never wear off and you’ve got a neat thing. If you don’t, you still get a full thing: post-emo dirges that have pretty much nothing to do with Dave Grohl.
BY NATHAN HEWITT
