It’s a Monday morning, and one cup of coffee isn’t doing my sleepiness justice. When caffeine fails, I turn to music, hoping to hear something that will spike my adrenaline. Luckily, a few tracks from Brooklyn-ish based band CUTTERS’ debut EP, Trying Not to Die, is potentially the fuel to my otherwise desperate morning crawl to the writing desk.
The word “broke-fi” is a new word to me, and appears to be a portmanteau of broken and wifi. Despite that I may be wrong in making this connection, I can see how this genre of music describes CUTTERS, setting them apart from your basic sci-fi musicians. You will not hear synths that promote the presence of aliens. On the contrary, there are a lot of disjointed sounds that seem to form bridges between parallel universes. “Pterodactyl (The P is Silent),” ruptures the time-space continuum with what sounds like war cries from the cretaceous era. Although I’ve listened to the likes of The Libertines, were yelling was part of the ambiance, at least there were lyrics to accompany the off-key melodies of Peter Doherty.
Luckily, the tracks that followed didn’t end the lives a million giant reptiles like the asteroid that impacted earth. “Young Gods,” carried words that could easily be the backdrop song of a collage of photographs: “Friends, friends, I need ya ‘til the end.” The vocals are somewhat smoother, if only because there is a more defined melody. Similarly, “Beginnings” and “X-Cutioner’s Son” suspend the listener in a world that is vaguely familiar. If any of you remember Drive-Thru band, Self Against City, the vocals on Trying Not to Die are eerily resonant of lead Jonathan Michael.
Although there is no definitive sound, CUTTERS embodies energies of what I imagine a Modest Mouse demo sounded like years ago. At first, the argumentative tone of CUTTERS (and by which I mean, yelling), seemed distracting and unnecessary. However, after listening to Trying Not to Die a few spins more, I came to the conclusion that the band is merely trying to promote the rawness of punk rock. Our polished eardrums are not attuned to shards of words, or lack thereof, nor are they accustomed to anything unprocessed. CUTTERS strays from the filters and preserves their sound, in whatever time, in whatever space, and makes music interesting.
Are you still trying to figure out what broke-fi incorporates exactly? I’m throwing it out there and saying that it’s a step away from every band on the Internet and a longing head-first dive into a New York club. How will you define it? Listen to CUTTERS’ Trying Not to Die, available on cassette April 30th courtesy of Internet Girlfriend Records, and define it for yourself.
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