Forget Cassettes

It was a Free Monday at Empty Bottle when I saw Forget Cassettes, for the second time. That's when you know you like it. That first time, I bought the CD but I still remember almost not buying it. A misguided frugal inner voice nearly convinced me. I know just five dollars but I was broke. Anyway, I really liked the performance with that intensity that races ahead and then stops suddenly and then on again. Ms Beth just had that control. The audience would sometimes clap thinking they just abruptly finished the song and then off they go again in the same song. Forget Cassettes just turn the corner on you really fast like that on more than one occasion.

It was hard to figure out how many people on both occasions that I saw FG were feeling about them. A reserved but observant crowd with some people genuinely enjoying them. The songs are roller coasters of hard abrasive expression. It sounds like that even before you know what Beth Cameron says. She can go from this fragile lilt barely holding her heavy words to these vicious vocal shreds. It's always the sense of wonder that ok's the spending, hell it's what made me go to Empty Bottle in the first place. Anyway, I was really taken with the live performance, and I like what I've been hearing ever since. Indeed I feel fortunate for the chain of events that lead me to seeing Forget Cassettes. And what an interesting name. The cassette tape being this relic and icon for its time. Icons are hard to forget even when they are in disuse.

This band will have staying power that can survive the mediums it currently uses. They got this cool, angry intensity that is articulate when you read the lyrics. But you feel it first, when you hear it. I still marvel at how minimal they are (Beth Cameron on guitar and vocal and Jay Leo on drums live). The most resonant example I can think of for comparison is early PJ Harvey. Fondness follows the trail familiarity leaves with the CD "Salt". What does not catch on immediately does so later. "Quiero, Quieres" interested me because of the use of spanish. Something is happening when you speak in tongues . There is something curious about why she uses it. Beth ends it "Quiereme o me muero!"...love me or I die. A desperate end to a song that boldly asserts in the beginning that she's nobody's number 2. Phrases catch my attention like headlines. "Lonely Does It" has a lot of these and they hit the liver with a boxer's precision. You feel all this when you read the lyrics and then you go and see them again with the full knowledge of what you beheld live. This whole CD strikes me as coming from the mindset of a wounded animal, dangerous and venomous. So there is nothing sappy about this. The songs don't seem to wallow in sadness, instead it writhes and convulses in righteous anger.

Zig