The Tempers – Vol. 1 (2010) [Self-Released] // Grade: A-

Seattle trio The Tempers describe themselves in no uncertain terms. “We are what rock and roll will be next…what disco should have been,” their website reads. “We are a three-headed monster eating pop music alive.” I don’t know about the first bit—the pop ‘n’ sugar masses probably aren’t ready for this much corpse paint and disco was, in retrospect, exactly what it had to be—but that last sentence; yeah, that one’s dead on. Vol. 1 is a lurching, monstrous mass of creep-dance, strange and theatrical, fueled by acid-trip synths and a voice like bestial opera. Little’s familiar about these sounds; you could shove ‘em next to Liquid Sky or Geneva Jacuzzi, the theatricality of a Gogol Bordello or the conceptual weirdness of a Karin Dreijer-Andersson, but The Tempers are ultimately untraceable. Where did that monster come from? Why is it eating our cities?

And it’s an easy monster to love—the beast with a heart of gold, you know, Frankenstein and the flower—provided you’ve got a taste for the stage-lit macabre. Everything about Vol. 1 is eerily emphatic: the gypsy trance of “Nile Style” and “Speaking in Tongues” circus organ, a hulking near-Italo bass on “Alone Again”. And Corina Bakker’s voice, that swirling, trilling, growling ghoul of a thing, projecting to the back row even in a whisper; hers is a voice that shatters rooms, sends villagers running. But it’s all so warm and embraceable, those disco lilts and slinky guitars, that you’re utterly compelled to go down the rabbit hole with them. To dance and move and hulk right alongside that gilt-hearted monster, because The Tempers, they may be eating pop music alive—but they’re spitting it back at you with an other-world sheen. Ungodly good stuff.

- Rue Sauvage