It’s likely you don’t know this band unless you pay close attention to my spotify activity or are one of the people who has gone through my record collection and asked me about the weird 7″ with Japanese writing all over it. I found said 7″ for .50 cents and it spins at 33 which I thought was goofy. I went expecting nothing and after I listened to both sides I found a noise rock band I quickly fell in love with.
Trumans Water doesn’t make music. Where noise groups like Deerhoof and Sonic Youth take elements of noise, improv, and dissonance to write songs, Trumans Water writes songs that are a fallacy. Anything relatable or interesting in their songwriting is a just an exaggerated representation of something much better. Music that is made out of pure naivety. The desire to make noise overpowers anything that resembles an interesting melody or a catchy chorus.
What’s left in the rubble is a question in your mind: Did I just listen to good music? Trumans Water manages to play a brain wiring trick on their listeners. Avant-Garde / No-Wave music often is intentionally meant to alienate the listener and in the process aim to expand the idea of what music is meant to be. Trumans Water doesn’t intentionally alienate you, but their music isn’t inviting either. They lie somewhere right before the uncanny valley where something is keeping your brain invested in the melody or the tone but objectively speaking there are mistakes on the recording or the track is sloppy due to its clearly improvised nature. Just as much as I wanna turn off Trumans Water my brain would hurt if I did like when someone stops singing a scale right before the octave note. There’s enough of a progression in the song that I wanna hear the rest of the song but I also cant stand something about their tone or the production or the vocals or whatever it may be.
Trumans Water just kind of exists because they want to exist. They make songs because a few people with instruments were in the same place, and the songs they make technically qualify as songs but just barely. It’s some dudes from california’s creative outlet and it wasn’t meant to get big or be their career. Finding them, at least for me, was like finding an old sketch pad from when you were 12. There’s just random drawings that you felt like drawing at the time and there was no other purpose to them besides the fact you felt like drawing them. I don’t think Trumans Water was formed as an intentional artistic statement as their satirical spotify bio is indicative of; if they were they aren’t good at it. The beauty of Trumans Water is simply that some dudes made music and if you feel like it you can to. Pure human expression.
If anything at all about what I said interests you I would recommend their album O Zeta Zunis. That being said, this band is kinda objectively bad. I think I just have a really specific interest in this specific band because they scratch a really weird itch for me. I have trouble saying I really even enjoy this band. More so than me liking their music or finding any inspiration in their songs, this band is sort of like musical thrill seeking for me. I just get a feeling when I listen to this band (and The Hospitals) that I like. As I said earlier, its like the wires in my brain are being crossed. I personally like it but I don’t think many people besides me, and John Peel apparently, enjoy it too much. I guess if you wanna taste of what I mean you could put a few tracks but even I get sick of it after about 20-30 mins and have to listen to actual songs again.
THE CLASSIC MONDAY BLOG 