Rock Picks: Steve Earle, Polvo, These Arms Are Snakes, Correatown
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12
These Arms Are Snakes @ The Smell
Seattle-by-way-of-Minnesota quartet These Arms Are Snakes has earned its slightly menacing and equally meandering name by making proggy post-hardcore for the better part of five years and three albums. The group’s artfully aggressive songs — which sport titles like “Prince Squid” and, on occasion, a lyric along the lines of “I want to be able to stick my fist in your mouth/And feel all 32” — have gotten tighter with time (as a serpentine embrace probably would), making them a sort of Bixler-Zavala/Rodriguez-Lopez combo in reverse. At the Drive-In, in fact, frequently comes to mind whilst one is listening to TAAS’ most recent full-length, 2008’s Tail Swallower and Dove (Suicide Squeeze), and this is a good thing — these guys are veterans with an impressive ear for detail and mastery of the form.
