BUILDINGS CRUMBLE

Nothing quite captures that feeling while your moving around the concrete labyrinth like buildings. Not exactly the band, here, but those towering structures that help form our pathways. What's more fundamental to a cityscape than those brick, glass and granite effigies we build in celebration of our mastery over nature? Sure buildings like to pretend that they're slick, impenetrable facades (ok buildings don't, but their designers do -- or at least attempt to choreograph our experience, but, the truth is, they're covered in shit. From literal shit to graffiti to the residual elements in the air, buildings are virtual sponges that silently record and fossilize the miniscule strata we're lucky enough to leave behind. Here, in Missoula, we like to pretend that buildings don't dominate our landscape. The silhouettes of the Wilma, Millennium Building, and First Interstate are dwarfed by the lumbering profiles of Jumbo and Sentinel. Hell, MB and FI hoped that their glass facades would  efface their presence by reflecting the surrounding skyline. We're not idiots; we realize that we need to go indoors to accomplish certain things, but, somehow, we pretend that buildings aren't part of our landscape. It's a nice luxury. (Did we mention musings in the initial post?)  ... Missoula presents an interesting, if not outright contradictory, intersection between development and conservation. We like it, and we loathe it. Our blood boils over every roundabout, pedestrian path, condo, box store, renovation project. That's the rub of it. We exist in our space, but we willfully ignore or nostalgically pine ....

Minneapolis's Buildings is one of those occasions that don't melt into the peripheral. They're hard, mathematical, straight-forward, and mercurial. Reminiscent of Jesus Lizard, there's an explosive, yet reserved aggression that builds up to an infinite series of releases. Fuck, man -- kick the genre-police to the curb. it's good, old fashioned hardcore pressed through 20 years of frustration of being mired in "post" this or "post" that. It shovels its own shit. They've been around for six plus years, but 2012's Melt, Cry,Sleep is an album that announces itself. I don't remember how or when I first heard them, but I was absolutely blown away. I stalked them on the internet for a few and waited patiently for a show close to home. It didn't happen. Next option? Bring that hard-hitting stuff to Missoula. So here we are: a Building's structured demolition. Unlike cheap-shot, one-trick pony, media hounds like Howler, Buildings re-situates and erects (pun intended) Minneapolis as a benchmark for music. There's no entitlement going on here. Hardworking dudes, pounding out riff after riff and layering it with that rejuvenated, pissed-off scaffolding that allows us all to breathe a little easier.