Wiki
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Release Date
1 January 2001
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Length
11 tracks
Before I get to the crux of North of America's latest, and debut full-length for Progeria Records in New York, I feel obliged to make space for the utterly cute artwork adorning This Is Dance Floor Numerology. Resembling slightly a Sergio Aragones cartoon with a Victorian bent, the five-panel sketch depicts a fellow leisurely strolling beside a building as his umbrella is snatched from his hands by a man in an open window. The offender then passes the umbrella into the hands of another man in the window above him, who in turn passes it on to yet another man on the roof. As the umbrella is planted in the chimney that presumably accomodates the men in both windows (as well as the man on the roof) the original owner of the umbrella, having dropped his coat and hat onto the sidewalk, shakes his fists with fury at the others, sitting leisurely back, smoking their pipes and reading their newspapers.
Just as any (probably inappropriate) communitarian interpretations of said artwork might inspire scorn in the reader, so to will my conclusion to finally file North of America into the progressive punk column. I can already hear howls of derision from the gallery: coming from an indie rock scene (that is, the foul Halifax scene), the members have indie rock pedigrees, tend to get attention in indie rock circles, play on an indie rock label with indie rock peers and, by most accounts, have some characteristics we might say are de rigueur of indie rock . To the skeptical I would say that some of these, at any rate, are less true now than when North of America released Elements of an Incomplete Map some years ago.
For example, I can no longer complain about bothersome Pavement-inflected vocals for two good reasons. First, such a minor, silly quibble on Dance Floor would be buried under a veritable avalanche of wild creativity. It would be like a rich man complaining about taxes. And second, no less importantly, the vocals on Dance Floor are exactly agreeable. (Note the conditional tense of the first reason.) North of America now summons mid-80s Nomeansno with some trickier and more layered guitarwork, hovering somewhere around Sex Mad or Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed-era without a proclivity for the sprawling. (And not only that, vocally the guys in North of America actually remind me John and Andy of Nomeanso, and like John and Andy of Nomeansno, I and can't really tell Mark, Mark, Mike, and J. apart either.) Excellent drumming busily frames constantly changing, usually dissonant, frayed guitar riffs, and a quartet of vocalists (that is, each member) shouts his respective lyrics. Before I get carried away, I should avoid falling into a trap describing this stuff: it's not anarchy like Deadguy or Drowningman. It's almost gentlemanly, like Fugazi. It's like indie rock that has been hit with the ambition stick, glazed with innovation, noise, creativity and seriousness. Or, if you will, progressive punk.
Dance Floor is the type of album that rides its own wave of consistency for forty mintes without screaming highs or bilious lows. Notably, catchy numbers, or even songs that surge along mellifluously, are also absent. There is nothing approaching (say) the nine-minute splendor of "Font Crimes" or the pop-bounce of "Built Sought Destination" of several years past. The entire album is written in the arena of the aggressive, and the disjointed; I can not however say angry, because too much fun is seemingly had here. The lyrics, as always, are couched deeply in familiar idioms, namely the band's geeky obsessions with language, writing, and words, with phrases like "processors they got, but they (ain't) got no process," "you can't spell revolution without 'U' and 'I'", "if grammar's a hammer why does subtlety matter?" and by far my favorite, "we fight with our hips and not with our fists."
There is no damn good reason why North of America can't be named among the heavyweights of whatever style they happen to be courting. If you believe in the meaninglessness of genre appellation (it is, more often than not, an ever-changing tableau), than it should suffice to say that Dance Floor will captivate anyone who happens to appreciate challenging and intelligent music.
Review by Lee Steadham
Review date: 06/2001
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