Eleven : Eleven

Sometimes, listening to Come’s Eleven:Eleven, there’s a desperation that feels like this is the quartet’s last chance, which is a damn weird feeling for a debut album. The two key songwriters, Thalia Zedek and Chris Brokaw, had certainly done their time in the trenches already, Zedek with Live Skull, Dangerous Birds and Uzi, Brokaw with Codeine. But Eleven:Eleven’s intensity built out of the songs’ jagged edges, their flick-knife turns and switchblade scars, and the fury of the playing (after all, Come had one of the best rhythm sections of their time). Zedek’s and Brokaw’s guitars are gnarled, molten masses, pure lava flows of noise; Zedek’s voice a bruised growl that, on “Sad Eyes”, keened beautifully. It’s a blues album, ultimately, charged, full of sexual tension, and at the right/wrong time, supremely discomforting.