Overreaction Time

The American rock underground’s unofficial hall of fame has a special wing reserved for evolution-minded lifers, artists who have made a career out of striking gold with one project, scrapping it and reemerging with something different yet equally great. Think of your Bob Moulds, Ian MacKayes, Mary Timonys or Rob Crows — wherever you enter their timeline, you’re going to find something special. Nick Sakes belongs on that short list, and this record is a key demonstration of why. (Full disclosure: I consider Nick a friend, but I was a fan for many years first.) By the time he formed Sicbay, the guitarist-vocalist had already been a part of two revelatory projects: Dazzling Killmen, who combined prog scope with post-hardcore ferocity to create a grisly masterpiece on 1994’s Face of Collapse; and Colossamite, which honed a bizarre yet wholly coherent avant-rock vocabulary on two brilliantly head-scrambling releases. One of Colossamite’s three guitarists, Ed Rodriguez — now of Deerhoof, along with Colossamite’s other guitarist, John Dieterich — later switched to drums for Sicbay, a new project with Sakes. It was, for lack of a better term, the poppiest thing Sakes had done: a band focused on concise rock songs that embraced a verse-chorus format. But as heard on Overreaction Time — which followed the band’s excellent 2001 debut, The Firelit S’coughs — some kind of special alchemy took place when his tortured howl and jagged riffs situated themselves in a more conventional context. Guitarist Dave Erb, a master at crafting lines that hit the sweet spot between post-Beefheartian weirdness and fist-pumping punk energy, turned every song into a mini anthem (see explosive opener “Herculaneum,” grinding math-rock workout “Meet the Jinx” or the moody shimmy of “The Buckle” and “Jack Pine”). And the album’s quieter songs (“Smoke Stains,” “Tremors”) held a hushed intrigue that was only hinted at in Sakes’ prior projects. Simply put, Overreaction Time is an unsung classic that belongs in the collection of anyone attuned to the possibilities of eccentric yet hard-driving rock, from Mission of Burma to the Jesus Lizard and Nomeansno.