Illinois : What the Hell Do I Know? EP

<img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/illinoiswhatthehelldoiknow.jpg" class="alignright" alt=" " />Pennsylvania’s Illinois (yes, you read that right) deliver on a lot of different stylings with just seven songs on their <em>What the Hell Do...
8.2 Ace Fu
2007 

 Pennsylvania’s Illinois (yes, you read that right) deliver on a lot of different stylings with just seven songs on their What the Hell Do I Know? EP. Coming off the backs of 2005’s Revenge of Some Young Kid EP, the Bucks County boys have gone even wider, hitting up everything from white-boy Southern hip-hop to disaffected withdrawal.  They put a layer of fuzzy, lo-fi distortion over everything, making it all a laid-back time, whether happy or sad.

What the Hell opens on a sad note with “Alone Again”, one of three truly downbeat pieces on the record.  Slow and soft, its melancholy is relaxed but heart breaking, and the song gets bigger as it goes along.  “What Can I Do For You?” unfortunately doesn’t quite grow as much as it should, leaving it a little simple, but it still holds up as a lovely goodbye.  But it is “Headphones” that is the most effective song of sorrow.  Fuzzier than the other two, this number about retreating from the world is not so much melancholy as it is resigned.  Using the ‘remove oneself from the world via headphones’, the piece puts its emotion on display without ever breaking its tragic monochrome.

But there’s a happy side to Illinois, one maybe not as beautiful, but more fun and engaging.  “One on One” is a fuzzy uplift that never gets too bright, thanks to a nice expansive chorus.  The following “Screendoor”, originally from Revenge, is relaxed in an old-timey way, and while it flows really well, it’s a bit too much in the sixties-pop vein, too many ‘ooh-ooh-ooh’s.  But the best upbeat pieces are “Nosebleed” (another Revenge import), and “Bad Day”.  “Nosebleed” holds up the banjo-twang good times of Revenge of Some Young Kid, with its wisdom about one’s messed-up life.  “Bad Day”, on the other hand, is a staccato, matter-of-fact, pseudo-white-boy rap about an actual ‘bad day’.  With the funny, charming storytelling, singer/songwriter Chris Archibald never takes his tongue out of his cheek.

Both pieces, and in fact the entire EP, see Archibald’s voice – and sometimes an entire number – done through a lo-fi fuzz that makes it all seem like it’s coming from a weak A.M. radio station.  But that’s about the only constant on What the Hell Do I Know?, which does give the EP something of a scattered feel.  However, when a band can do so many things so well, why shouldn’t they go everywhere at once?

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