Wives-Erect The Youth Problem

Band creation myths don't get much weirder or better than this: according to legend, Wives singer Dean Spunt launched his own label, Post-Present Medium, and financed his band's first EP using the large settlement he scored following a traffic accident with one of the Backstreet Boys. If the fact that blow-dried creampuff Nick Carter's musical career is inexorably linked with Spunt's spastic, minimal no-wave doesn't prove that God does indeed have a sick sense of humor, it's unlikely that anything else will.

Wives trade in a cramped, nervous fury that bubbles just below the surface of their short, scabrous eardrum assaults. A collision of detuned guitars, busted drums and Spunt's distorted, Albini-esque wails completes a mental image of open mic night in the psych ward. Wives also recall the feral stompings of prime Big Black and Black Flag -- the period when both bands scored high on unfocused rage and significantly lower on technical skill and actual songs (only four of these 14 tracks clock in at over two minutes; most quickly burn out or collapse under their own weight. Erect the Youth Problem is a loud, vicious, chaotic mess (which is entirely the point), but in this business, that's often more than enough.

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