Mr. Dream - Trash Hit

Swag is a delicate thing. In hip-hop, rappers cultivate it with care and persistence, as though they were selling a product—shill enough, and somebody will buy in. But with punk rock, swag is self-evident, and on Mr. Dream’s stellar debut LP Trash Hit, it’s there from the first smoldering bass line.

A Brooklyn trio featuring two prominent music writers—vocalist/guitarist Adam Moerder and drummer/producer Nick Sylvester—and vocalist/bassist Matt Morello, Mr. Dream shows none of the prissy abstraction with which critics are often stereotyped. Trash Hit is sweltering no-wave grafted onto the skeleton of modern punk that, aside from a few notable standard-bearers, has been cast aside for the insipid drone of chillwave and glo-fi now dominating the contemporary discussion.

Mr. Dream’s strutting sound careens between repeated, pugilistic guitar riffs, rising and diving like F-16s, and fuzzy bass that lends the songs a teeth-bared, hackles-raised ferocity. Sylvester’s relentless drumming sets the breakneck, two-and-a-half-minutes-or-less pace and guides the freewheeling sonics.

But to have a truly dominant punk band of the kind that these guys are going for—literate, confident and generally pissed-off—vocals are the lynchpin. Moerder’s art-rebel yell is at once controlled and lunatic, and songs here are imbued with aphoristic mantras and come-ons: “And now he’ll never be the same” (“Scarred for Life”); “Honey, go get my shotgun” (“Shotgun Tricks”); “Heaven is just a zip code” (“Learn the Language”). The thick, twangy “Knick Knack” best embodies Mr. Dream’s pulsing swagger: “I’m David, I’m Goliath/You’re a knick-knack/I’m the Fuhrer, I’m the Kaiser/You’re a knick-knack.”

No quarter is given on Trash Hit; though Mr. Dream released a few tremendous songs prior to the LP, “Knick Knack” is the only one to make the cut, which just affirms the record’s consistency. But of the 13, the three best—slowed-down anthem “Unfinished Business,” the angular, caterwauling “Cool Down Apollo” and the menacing “Croquet”—all mine different veins of the same terrorizing, absolutely necessary rock-and-roll.

Like Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor last year, and Pixies and early Spoon (think Telephono), Mr. Dream isn’t solely good music. Trash Hit is a riot against today’s regime of toothless, eyes-inward monotony.