picture by
Josh
Well I really hope you have heard of
Public Eye before reading these lines, if not you really missed
something pal!
Featuring all members from the great
Autistic Youth (they just swapped instruments and changed their
name), the band is keeping alive and kicking the great tradition of the Portland
(Oregon) punk scene which started shaking up the little world of punk in
the early years of the 2000s with, what I call, Melocholic punk rock!
I am of course thinking about
The Observers,
Red Dons,
The Estranged, and
Autistic Youth
but also
Defect Defect,
The Speds
(pre-Observers band) and to a lesser extent
The Minds
and
Steel Chains.
Ok so let's be honest here, to me Public Eye is one of the best punk band of the last ten years. And I mean it!
I have listened to their first two releases hundreds of times and never
got bored of it, so yes I am glad I can finally write a few words about them.
Mood Change Party
was released as a demo in 2015. Demo my ass this thing is a fucking
masterpiece!
In 5 songs these guys totally blew me away... it's catchy, it's melodic,
it's sad, it makes you wanna sing, dance, have a beer, kiss your best
friend on the ass and all that together!
With great bass lines, a perfect recording sound, a just-melodic-enough
guitar playing and some heady but beautiful chorus vocals,
Public Eye manages to make perfectly fit together the melancholy
and
disillusionment of early post-punk with the
melodic catchiness of modern punk rock... and that is genius!
The demo was released as a tape by
Sabotage Records
from Germany and Exit Records from Malaysia.
Two years later, in 2017, the four men from Oregon are back with a full length which after a release by the band finally got out on Best Before Records (which has not put out many records from what I know).
When I first listened to
Relaxing Favorites
I thought my heart was going to stop, the album picks up exactly where the
tape had stopped (it actually includes 3 songs from
Mood Change Party so yes literally)... and turns the
masterpiece into a greater masterpiece!
Same fantastic recipe with a little bit more distorted guitar sound,
Public Eye is on top of the world!
I could go on and on about each songs but I would just repeat some words
like great, fantastic, mind blowing or
amazing all along, emptying them from their whole meaning...
Yes it is all that and so much more, it's Wire jamming with
The Observers, it's The Cigarettes drinking with
Red Dons after Ian Curtis passed out under the pool
table...
Moving up a gear on a few songs, the whole lot is melodic, beautiful, catchy,
swinging, whatever but also deeply punk! And to me there are only a few
bands which have been able to marry so well sense of melody, deep
emotional transmission and the energy and inflexibility of punk rock
(whatever punk rock means to you). I mean it talks to all the layers of
myself and damn... it turns me totally upside down...
I will never get bored of
Relaxing Favorites.
The band goes through a little line-up change after that, Samia replacing
Alex at the bass.
I will now jump the track on the
split with The Estranged from 2018
(a weird, almost new wave, song with what sounds like a drum machine) and
go directly to their latest release.
(and there is not even a single dot of red on this split's cover!)
Public Eye is back with
Music For Leisure, their second full length, three years after Relaxing Favorites, and
you can imagine how excited I was when I heard about it.
Released by
Drunken Sailor
in Europe and
Pop Wig
in the states, it was about time that some "big" label started being
interested in the band from Portland!
So I have to be honest here, at first I was deeply disappointed by this
album.
No track was really catching up my attention... I found the whole lot
quite sluggish and boring...
And then I listened to it again... and again...
Ok it starts really weakly with Descending which poorly tries to
keep the recipe of the previous album, unfortunately crosses the "low
energy border" the band was sometimes edging with in the past and delivers a
failed attempt of a new style of guitar solo.
New Year and The Door is Closed are a bit better, the
formula works well all right but it still lacks energy despite a couple of
great parts (and definitely these guitar solos...no).
Awful Questions is probably the best track of the album winning
the title thanks to a solid and catchy guitar riff.
Lost Dog which was the first song release on bandcamp,
Neat Machines / Red Flag, The Fiend and
I Might Go are really lacking something... the energy is low and
it almost sounds like a lame indie band sometimes. The idea was to keep it
punk guys!
I really like The Duet, a calm song with a dark but interesting
atmosphere which turns into a saxophone circus, bringing a bit of
craziness at last.
You're Being Laugh At starts like another typical
not-too-bad-not-too-great song and then builds up slowly slowly an
interesting mix of saxophone, haunting melodies and (slightly) greater
energy. Yes the sax was a good idea!
In the end, despite a few good songs, this albums fails to completely convince me. It's not bad but it's lacking the energy of Relaxing Favorites. The band has not been able to reproduce the delicate balancing act between energy and soft melody of the 2017 album.
N,J'Oi!
You can listen to Public Eye and other stuff on Rien à Faire #13.
