The 1980 Listening Post - Pylon - Gyrate

Pylon - Gyrate

#430

by Paul Zickler

October 1980

Pylon

Gyrate

Genre: Post-Punk New Wave Minimalism

Allen’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Paul’s Rating: 3 out of 5

Highlights: 

Human Body

Read a BookDriving School

This album only streams on YouTube. I decided to listen to it all the way through without looking up song titles or any information about the band. I took copious notes, which I’ll summarize below.

Pretty much every song establishes a very basic guitar riff over an even more basic bass line, accompanied by one of about three drumming styles: the boom-boom (think early U2 but less martial), the clickety-clickety (think early Police but less reggae), and the dancey-dancey (think early Blondie but less fun). Once the intro ends (20 to 40 seconds, except for the one instrumental), the singer does her thing, which is sometimes angsty/growly, sometimes shouty/yelly, and sometimes talky/whiny. The better songs have a verse/chorus/verse pattern with discernible lyrics. The worse songs essentially repeat one riff over and over, with maybe a short, dumb guitar solo (Dumb as in a trying to sound like Tom Verlaine but instead sounding like you only know how to play three notes).

I liked some songs much better than others. Often, on the songs I didn’t like as much, it was really hard to tell what the singer was saying. Some of my lyric notes:

Is she singing “aliens! aliens!” or “elegance! elegance!?” 

“I wee dumb erectus? I really don’t direct this?” 

The guys are yelling “Breakfast!” over and over now. I think.

“He stole my house… with the horse in it… he stole my hearrrrrt.”

Yelling some words. No idea, sorry. “I can’t watch TV at all” maybe?

Songs that were OK: 1, 3, 6, 10, 11, 13

Songs that were not OK: 2, 4, 5, 12, 14, 16

Songs that were aces: 7, 8, 9

Remix I refused to listen to: 15

Songs 10 and 11 seemed to be connected - one was sorta upbeat: “You can dance dance dance if you want to.” The other was more robotic: “You cannot dance. You cannot move.” 

I wrote, “This band sounds like if the B-52’s were fronted by a less articulate Su Tissue, and Fred Schneider was either kicked out or killed. No, they’re not scary enough to kill him. Maybe they just yelled at him and he ran away.”

I have now looked up some info. It turns out the version on YouTube is “Gyrate Plus,” which adds songs and changes the order of the original. Weirdly, songs 10 and 11 came out at totally different times despite seeming to be connected. So from the actual album, I either dug or tolerated 7 out of 11 songs. Not bad. Then again, I only actually enjoyed 3 of 11, so that’s not so good.

 

Also, these guys are from Athens, Georgia, which totally vindicates my B-52’s comparison. While this was not a fun album to listen to, there were things about it I enjoyed. The minimalist new wave sound could be interesting with better ideas and better playing. They were critical darlings, opened for the B-52’s, Gang of Four and U2, broke up early, and became legendary. I guess I can see it, but it doesn’t mean I liked the album overall. Let’s just say when I turned it off, my wife was grateful.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqBlz5PPp4s