Evil Dr. Smith: If you’re now still wanting, wailing and whining about a retraining exercise of ‘Troublegum’, or even worse: hardcore cover ballads like ‘Diane’, then you have been utterly ignorant for the last fifteen years and is my only advice to be kicked pretty hard on your behind. Therapy? is doing his stubborn thing and if you like, it’s fine. But if you don’t like their pigheadedness, then Andy Cairns & Company don’t give a rat’s ass about it. As long as they can put their fun, energy and virulence in their music, which means that they don’t concentrate themselves anymore on those teenager sing-along punk rock songs. Not that those weren’t brilliant, but that was then and this is now. Their last five albums weren’t always commercially and artistically successful, but on this album at least the artistic degree is very satisfying. Their obstinate angularity is celebrating it dominance on this album and sounds like an homage to the freaky cold grooves of Prong, Helmet, Big Black and The Jesus Lizard.
After the commercial heydays of ‘Troublegum’ and ‘Infernal Love’ it looks like Therapy? have become especially keen on very memorable titles of the opening tracks: ‘He’s Not That Kind Of Girl’, ‘Gimme Back My Brain’, ‘Hey Satan – You Rock’, ‘Outro’ (pretty odd for an opening track). This time it’s ‘The Head That Tried To Strangle Itself’, but it’s a bit of a rusty start. After that the Prong-like grooves in ‘Enjoy The Struggle’ is a lot more exciting and when the unruly percussion and industrial-sounded guitars in ‘Clown Galore’ resembles the ancient classic ‘Teethgrinder’ I’m getting a big, very big smile on my face. I keep that smile throughout the whole album with its against the grain type of rhythms, the dark melodies, pounding grooves and the nasal, but always instant recognizable voice of Andy. His lyrics and voice has a contemplating, reflective character; possibly the reason to name this album ‘Crooked Timber, which refers to a phrase from the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant. Also their ex-drummer Keith Baxter passed away suddenly last year, just before the band started recording this album, so that has undoubtedly its effect on the mood and lyrics of the album.
In the last two songs the band shows a completely different side. The adventurous and completely instrumental ‘Magic Mountain’ is with its ten minutes by far the lengthiest song in Therapy’s discography, and could be renamed into ‘Black Mountain’, because the pseudo-psychedelic jams sounds it came directly from the band with that name. When also the last song ‘Bad Excuse For Daylight’ goes on and on for six minutes with friable, almost sludgy riffs, I think that must be the death sentence for the band in the eyes of every punk rocker that loves melodic, pointed songs. Oh well, the band already wrote their death sentence with the inaccessible noise rock on ‘Suicide Pact – You First’ ten years ago, so they don’t need to win those superficial souls back. The band does win depth and diversity with ‘Crooked Timber’. Therapy? has still not been cured of its rebelliousness and venomous hooks, so let’s hope for numerous therapy sessions in the future.
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