Minutia: Pile, "Special Snowflakes"
January 30, 2014
Courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan
We’re not even a month into 2014 and already 2013 pales in comparison. Unannounced, Pile released their colossal 7-minute single, “Special Snowflakes.” After seeing the song live and having the air vacuumed right out of my lungs, all the recording could really hope to do was not disappoint. And it doesn’t.
The song starts humbly enough, with a Connery bassline that introduces a melodic motif that will reappear in various forms throughout the song. Kris Kuss adds his signature accents of percussive splashes as guitar and piano seep into the mix. Rick Maguire’s vocals wander about in his rarely-utilized falsetto as the instrumentation gradually gets more and more menacing before everything falls away. In its place emerges the delicate interplay between guitar, piano and drums. Heavily distorted guitar chords force the band into a spiraling mix of screeching harmonics and chest-pounding toms. Maguire delivers his anti-millennial lyrics with the muscular force that we’ve come to expect and love from Pile, while guitar freak-outs punctuate the verses. The section ends with “Now it’s tough to tell if ever he was real/Just knows the crunch of his new boots crushes all special snowflakes” over a piercing guitar line.
At this point, you know something massive is about to lift its head and Kuss’ urgent toms give way to a snare crack to confirm the suspicions. If Bruce Springsteen was right in saying that the opening snare hits of “Like A Rolling Stone” was the sound of the door to your mind being kicked in, then this is a bulldozer driven right through the wall. The band plays chords in unison that sound heavier and sludgier than anything in recent memory. The sheer muscle of the section finds the simultaneous melody and heft that history’s metal bands have been searching for, yet never reached. Maguire gets right to the cusp of screaming, but hold off as the song returns to its melodic motif roots.
This time everything feels a bit more menacing than before with Kuss now free to add his fills that fit perfectly, albeit unconventionally. A twisted folk-grunge guitar lead-in thrusts the band back into the heavy section, but now Kuss is loose, Maguire is screaming, and I’m on the verge of tears. The same guitar harmonics signal the change to an even more frantic, spastic version of the composition. Maguire’s guitar begins oscillating around the band before his vocals do the same. I want to say the climax comes as Maguire lets it all loose as he screams, “TIE THOSE GOLD LACES,” but the best part of this band is that you always think a song hits its peak anywhere between three or four times per song. Rhythmically, the song shifts and dances around the vocal melody of the final verse before we find ourselves again at Maguire just on the verge of yelling on “Tough to tell if ever he was real, just knows the crunch of those old boots keeps him a special snowflake,” but this time all that remains is a single snare hit to end the song.
The musical world still has well over 300 days to convince me otherwise, but I can’t imagine much topping the immediate, yet seamless transition from quiet, pretty, dark folkish parts to drop-D jams with haywire guitars and Maguire’s gorgeously powerful screams. It’s these transitions and the band’s consistent ability to one up themselves, no matter how good it’s already been, that leave me speechless and skeptical that 2014 will ever look brighter.
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