Score: 9/10
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Style is a funny thing. No, check that. T-Rextasy is a funny thing. There, that’s more like it.
Don’t believe me? Let’s go to track three “Girl, Friend,” which could easily pass for a song by Belly. Basically Lyris Faron is telling a story on vocals about wanting to have a female as a friend, a “girlfriend,” as women used to say in the ’90s or so although today that term seems a little antiquated, hence the punctuated title here apparently. There’s lots going on in Faron’s narrative here as there is with most of the portrayals she frames all over this album. This girl is over and they’re having a good time and even to my ears I did not get the vibe that they were lesbos, but, almost seemingly as a way of tending to those annoying a**holes who would assume such a thing, they have another voice ask during a climactic break in the music: “Are you gay?” to which Faron responds simply, in her copiously used fake British accent, “I decay… Just be my friend!”, to which the music then answers with some more sort of middle-of-the-road ’90s-style alt-rock, which as I allude to called Belly or Throwing Muses to mind, though funnier, the simplicity of which should all the better make this cute café music the land over. Elsewhere, the album features a song called “Pretty Boy” trolling a guy with curb appeal and fake androgynous agendas, as well as a song where halfway through it, while the music is still going, the band members each introduce themselves one by one in spoken word. This last song is “Theme from Prehysteria,” appropriately enough.
Ope… this is cute café music. There, I said it. It’s not hardcore punk, although they seem mildly Be Your Own Pet-influenced, if only in spirit. It’s not grindcore. It’s not vaporwave. Yes, as I allude to: it does not exist within style at all and when Lyris Faron employs that fake British accent throughout the album (she would make a perfect bandmate for Jack White), you could call it fake, or you could just say, well, at this point the ability to have fun within a tired format is not only more commendable but also arguably more requisite of unorthodox techniques such as this one.
Anyway, this is apparently a full band of teenage girls out of New York City, none of which really drops the ball too much in terms of technical skill — the drums have a way of offering a variety of tight beats, the riffy guitar work has an awesome knack for cloaking the mix texturally and mimicking Faron’s vocal in an artistic way and the bass seems always to be there doing its job. The rudiments are so basic, but then New York is also the town that bequeathed us Be Your Own Pet, The Men, Oxford Collapse, any number of trios or quartets pumping new life into the age-old format of “alt-rock.” What’s going to foster the truth progress of music in the year 2019? If T-Rextasy prove one thing it’s that a sense of humor sure don’t hurt.