Don Caballero - American Don (Album Review)

 

Don Caballero - American Don

(2000)

My copy: 2000 press by Touch And Go.

Don Caballero had fallen to a trio come 2000’s American Don, with Damon Che’s crazed drumming finding itself slightly shrunken under the layered, spastic guitar work of Ian Williams. Not quite as voracious and raw as earlier Don Cab records, American Don revels more in building up playgrounds of guitar for the drums to crash into. While this is an ambitious work, some patience is lost due to just how expansive the record is. 

Bright guitar melodies pop and crackle over groaning bass on “Fire Back About Your New Baby’s Sex” before the drums usher the song into new structures. The drums change tempos and alter the pacing but the guitars will often remain glittering with looped textures, only adding and removing new riffs. “The Peter Criss Jazz” is 10+ minutes of guitar and drums taking turns leading each other into new movements, like a dance of tension between two tonally opposite forces. The guitars on “The Peter Criss Jazz” are especially delayed and introspective, more akin to ambient music at times; thus the post-rock comparisons. Glitched loops, sputtering bass and dissonant polyrhythms all threaten to derail the songs, but nothing can hinder Che’s renegade drumming. 

“Haven’t Lived Afro Pop” smoothly glides between tempos and time signatures, then sticks to a single groove until the drums explode in the end. The riffs on “You Drink A Lot Of Coffee For A Teenager” sound unhinged or even nonsensical until they slide into a catchy melody that gets picked up by the drums. Feedback floods in and deconstructs the song - oftentimes the band has more in common with jazz improvisations, but are kept firmly anchored to rock by the booming production and playing of the drums. “Ones All Over The Place” reaches to nearly ten minutes, though it is inferior to track 2. The insane power in Che’s drumming and rhythmic almost totally elevate it. 

“I Never Liked You” carries the most punk energy on the album, with continuous guitar tones that are filled out by syncopated dissonant riffs. The drums barrel through the track with attitude, as if they were tired of the careful plotting of the guitar lines. “Details On How To Get ICEMAN On Your License Plate” passes as the most traditionally structured song in that it has an earworm riff that is repeated like a chorus. Williams uses delay to warp his guitar into a tangle of melodies, often playing in the margins of the drum beats. Fatigue will likely set in right around “A Lot Of People Tell Me I Have A Fake British Accent” where the band’s tricks start to get a bit stale. Mostly it’s just that there is a lot of material to cover, and it's difficult to keep things fresh with only guitar, bass and drums. The song does eventually reinvent itself into a dense hellscape of dissonant slides and chords before doubling the tempo. 

The final track opens with glitch bass loops before a bombastic combo of toms and bass propel the song into snappy guitar riffs and a dynamic progression. Ambient delayed guitar expands the song beyond typical rock music, closing the entire effort with a tremendous swell. While Don Caballero themselves would likely shudder at the thought, they certainly do play to the post-rock crowd the most on this release, albeit in ways that are far more frantic than subtle. American Don is an impressive work for its technicality, but it can certainly wear the ill-prepared down. If it had trimmed a bit of the fat it could have been a truly amazing release, but for a better sense of balance you’re better sticking to their ‘98 record.