Mesh's self-titled EP is simple but satisfying. Noodle limbed, punchy, DIY rock that will slap you on the nose like a Stretch Armstrong belted to a ceiling fan. It's all the best aspects of oddball rock for the sake of rolling around in your own piss, pleasure, and vacant presence of mind that you could ever ask for. We're all alienated, isolated, half-delusional apes at the end of the day, and we might as well get on and start enjoying it. What I like about Mesh's psych-inspired, gangly garage rock is that they're able to make the sense of humiliating helplessness that permeates mid-western, rust-belt life with the same level of fun and delight that you'd expect from a beachside barbeques Elvis used to star in (you know, back when he was still a hunk... and alive). Take, for instance, the paranoid pogo of "CIA Mind Control" which wiggles and winds its way around a slate of guitar revs that jut at you like a bed of nails. It might sound uncomfortable at first, but Mesh's style and enthusiasm are playful enough to make every elusion to punishment headed your way feel like a prize you've won at the county fair. The second track "Company Jeep" in contrast has a more smoothed-out and elastic melody that paves the way for the fierce and ominous drive of "Traveler." The mood lightens even more with the tree-scaling, bark-chewing bob "Missing Link" only to come crashing down in the dumbfounding, witchy death-wish "Ur Dead." Slap this freak in your cassette deck and let it weave its way into your brain meat into oiled-up linguine.
