PC Worship
Social Rust
Release Date: Sep 9, 2014
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Northern Spy
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Album Review: Social Rust by PC Worship
Very Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
‘Odd’ is an apt title for the track on PC Worship’s fourth full-length Social Rust, a song that begins with a minute of droning hiss that’s as if the band have just walked off stage after a seriously sweaty show. When the chugging lead guitar kicks in, it’s accompanied by some horrifying screams and blown-out fuzz, essentially making it the perfect companion to a time-lapse of a decaying animal or piece of rotting fruit. A sludgy, menacing introduction that starts the album as it means to go on, the Brooklyn-based band are indulging themselves in a bit of alternative rock’s more formulaic side on ‘Social Rust’, but don’t expect its appeal to come instantaneously - work’s needed on the listener’s end, too.
Based on rating 7.8/10
For five years, PC Worship have been the sort of amorphous New York ensemble that can only be defined by a series of question marks. Is this an improv noise collective? A "mutant soul band"? A casual experiment in home-recording? If so, why is their loft called Le Wallet? Did they really all meet as New School jazz majors? Is it true they build their own instruments? And why is one called "the shitar"? PC Worship is, in essence, a twisted, low-pitched vision of subterranean psychedelia—variously made of bad-moon-lit trash-punk, droning minimalism, prepared pianos, and Albert Ayler-worshipping sax freak-outs—as imagined by one Justin Frye, who handled vocals, guitars, tape manipulations, and keys as the writer, recorder, and producer of this latest behemoth, Social Rust. Frye has played back-up for experimental synth-cyborg Gary War as well as Baltimore weirdos Teeth Mountain, both of which offer only a surface idea of PC Worship's frayed, pummeling avant-gardism.
Based on rating 2.5/5
Justin Frye’s PC Worship has been steadily disseminating tape-damaged noise rock transmissions through the Brooklyn underground since 2009. In that time, the project has garnered love from Real Estate’s Matt Mondanile and Parquet Courts, the latter of whom will be forming Voltron-like with PCW for their fall tour. Coming at a time like this, Social Rust, the band’s fifth full-length, then, could be a de facto entry point for a whole new audience to explore Frye’s peculiar aesthetic, and as such, he’s sculpted the record according to some of PC Worship’s more accessible impulses.
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