It surprises me how prominently Whores.'s second EP Clean. has stood in my record collection since its debut in 2013. Of course, I didn't discover it until just before they unleashed their 2016 LP Gold., and because of it, the EP felt like a precursor at the time. I figured it would eventually be shifted to the back of a milk crate and end up being lugged to a record store for resale at some point. This has not the case. As I said, its position in my personal catalog has only become more entrenched, and its shadow has grown longer with time. This seems due to the fact that it's the release where Whores. finally nailed the right balance of blistering, distorted sludge rock- that sounds like it is being performed by the future ancestors of Morlocks- and gauging social commentary that glides into your perception like someone's thumb driving directly into the center of your eye. They would later polish and perfect this aesthetic on Gold., but the way that it emerges on Clean. is truly bracing and unsettling.
I get such a strong sense of foreboding when I listen to Clean. One that seeps into my bones and never manages to dissipate. Like how the dark and murky, brain-broth, blues grooves of opener "Baby Bird" manage to portend impending disaster, even before vocals enter the picture and intimate a disturbing, and all too familiar, sense of entitlement and coddled neurosis, with all the subtly of a beartrap folding on some poor quarry's leg. Or the way that the guitars on "I Am Not A Goal Oriented Person" have a nasty, impelling quality to them, one that resembles a bullwhip, employed against a marching, labored, and depressive groove, that will not be hurried, regardless of the punishment that is layered on top of it, causing the whole song to become a cycle of self-inflicted violence that only becomes more abusive with each repetition.
What sticks with me about Whores. though, is that beyond just their style and vision, they give off a bad vibe. And Clean. is the album where I first noticed this about them. Listening to this album is like making direct eye contact with a very large snake, and feeling the full strain of the cold, hungry, calculating set of motives that is returned to you with its gaze. Like it is waiting for the moment you blink to strike and release its venom into your flush, fleshy cheeks. Whores. have the same vicious instinct about them, but only more frightening because it is interspecies.
Every veil ripping denouncement of the petty-bourgeois, every spark that is thrown on the heaping trash pile of our consumer culture, and every castrating stab taken at contemporary masculinity on Clean. is presented as if the band is letting you in on the fun. As if it's actually someone else who represents the quantum of all of society's problems, and the band is inviting you to justifiably ridicule them. And while it's true that Whores.'s ruthless polemics are both funny and insightful, it's hard to shake the feeling that you've been invited to the party as a party favor, rather than a guest. No one is safe from the band's ire, though. The worst parts of this country that they point to, are all present in you as well. And once you've let your guard down and gotten near enough, they'll stick a knife in you, and pop you open like they were opening a clam- exposing the bubbling pit of vipers, self-pity, and rosy, red #5 dyed narcissism that dwells inside. Will the last thing that crosses your mind be the realization that you've deserved it? If you've been paying attention, then there can only be one answer to this question.
