Come
Eleven:Eleven
20th Anniversary Edition
Come played the blues. Not like the White Stripes or the
Black Keys. More like Patti Smith
and Black Sabbath, with a little bit of Joplin-like anguish thrown in to stir
the pot. Two harsh, interlocking guitars, sounding grimy, dirty, dark and
angry, yet flowing and highly melodic. It’s like this lyrically too, but for
all the loss and dashed dreams sung about, there is also a strong thread of
hope and redemption throughout, a break in the clouds on a rainy day.
Thalia Zedek,
who played in Dangerous Birds, Uzi and Live Skull, formed Come with guitarist
Chris Brokaw, Sean O’Brien on bass, and drummer Arthur Johnson in 1990, in
Boston. Their first release was the single “Car “ on Sub Pop’s singles club, a
very good song. Eleven:Eleven,
their full length debut for Matador, won much acclaim in 1993, and it’s easy to see why. Zedek was,
and is, mesmerizing. Her anguished, gritty yet resolute and confident singing
rang out furiously. That she was
out when you weren’t supposed to be was very daring, and getting sober after
years of hard drug use helped, too.
Her guitar playing dazzles, as does Brokaw. Even though this was
characterized as noise rock, I find their music soothing, a way to get out a
lot of pain, if you’ve got it. And
the add-on to the album, the 7-inch “Fast Piss Blues” and “I Got The Blues,”
fits in seamlessly.
The live disk from 10/10/92, a performance from the
Vermonstress Festival included in the reissue, shows how powerful the band
could be live. O’Brien and Johnson shine here, providing a moving yet sturdy
foundation for the guitar wildness going on onstage. While Zedek and Brokaw stretch out a bit on here, they don’t
jam. For all the wildness, it’s just a twisted framework to work from and rock
out in. Zedek growls her words,
and the frenzied way she sings matches the guitars note for note. Pavement, Sugar,
Dinosaur Jr., and Nirvana requested them for tours, and they were absolutely
right to do so.
The reissue of this wonderful album, that has been out of
print until now, is also a reminder that there was more to alternative rock
than grunge. There was an
underground, and Come was one of the best bands in it. Don’t miss this album. Its reissue
shines a light on what was going on below the surface of rock at the time, and
it’s very welcome.
Andrea Weiss
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