The recorded output of USA/Mexico has documented a steady musical deceleration, from the relatively (an important adverb here) rockin’ riffs of their first LP, Laredo (2017), to the stretched-out, ear-splitting sludge of Matamoros (2019); see especially the narcotized but somehow still fearsomely truculent “Anxious Whitey,” one of the best tunes released during that year of pre-COVID 19 heavy music. Ah, what halcyon days.
Now we have Del Rio to deal with, and some clear patterns have emerged: we can expect to hear from USA/Mexico about every two years; their records will be titled after cities located somewhere near the southern border identified by the band’s name; the music keeps getting slower, noisier and nastier. Listeners’ reactions to “Anxious Whitey”…
…will be a pretty good predictor for how they might react to hearing — or perhaps enduring — the three songs on Del Rio. If long-ass slabs of rumble and thunder, punctuated by weirdly warbling feedback and subhuman shouting, are your thing, so is this record. Whether or not that’s a sign of health or a well-adjusted outlook on human endeavor is an open question.
The three members of USA/Mexico (Craig Clouse, Nate Cross and King Coffey) have all been durable fixtures in the prolific noise rock and art scenes in Austin, TX. Clouse’s whacko, prolific project Shit and Shine has gotten some much-overdue love on an international scale over the past couple years, but Coffey’s name may still ring out a bit louder; for sure Coffey’s old band the Butthole Surfers has a moniker that’s still widely recognized, for reasons good and bad. At their most unpleasant, USA/Mexico’s dissonant dirges can evoke the darkest, heaviest stuff on Locust Abortion Technician (1987), one of the clutch of excellent records the Butts cut for Touch and Go. But USA/Mexico is its own thing, exploring intensities of volume and slurry-slogged undulations that seek…well, it’s sort of unclear. Not the sublime, not transcendence, not meditative serenity, but not not those states, either. This reviewer is reminded of a key principle from Stephen Wright’s indispensable Meditations in Green (1985): “If you can’t ascend, you might as well descend.”
So: go down and slow down. “Chorizo,” the first track on Del Rio, advances at a drunken, half-speed, grouchy shuffle. But by the third, longest (at over sixteen minutes) song, the record’s title track, USA/Mexico have exchanged their interest in sluggard movement for pounding percussion and roaring bluster that flirt with total stasis. “Del Rio” is not drone; there are too many gut-displacing impacts, spaced out like mortar blasts moving inexorably toward a fixed target. The song’s death march goes on for over seven minutes, with a harsh, bellowing voice adding to the noise (that might be Colby Brinkman, who is credited with “vocals” on the record). The drumbeats drop out, letting the guitars resonate, crackle and break up, awash in the force of the distortion. Maybe the death march is ending — but nope, here come those drums again, and you see that there’s still about half of the song left. Another pattern is in place: rumble with drums, then rumble with no drums. Repeat. And play the song again.
In some ways, “Del Rio” is a maximalist experience: its length, the bludgeoning power of the instruments, its desire for still more volume. But there’s also an austerity in the way the song functions, the simplicity of its components and the rigorously limited range of the riffs. That’s true of the whole record, and prolonged exposure to USA/Mexico’s weirdly grand grimness isn’t for everyone. But for some listeners, it’s the kind of ugly that palpates a very sweet spot, indeed.