The drums would fill a stadium. The guitars are so heavy that they must be made of depleted uranium. The singer’s pitch wavers so much that he would be the perfect advert for autotuning. There’s a post punk square peg in a round hole vibe that would suggest a haunting by Joe Strummer. Hell, there’s even a kid reciting something or other on one of the songs. What is the Love Load up to here?
If only I knew. The facts indicate a collaboration between three twisted souls – Ben Azzara, Ted Watts and Blaine Misner – with the intention to confuse. It is almost fashionabkle these days to have psych-pop influences but, in truth, bands taking that path rarely rise about the level of a pastiche. The Love Load, on the other hand, just plain mess with your head. Take “Nervous Alligator” as an example, you can only imagine the madness that can twist metaphors around alienation. One thing is for certain - you’ve got to pay attention here as even in calm conventionality of the instrumental “Birth”, something unsettling lurks just beneath the surface.
I reckon that “The Human Resourceful” is the concept album revisited, a revolution against plastic music and an offbeat off Broadway musical all in one. These days, it is just not normal to make the listener work this hard but perhaps that is the point but I, for one, am glad that there are still bands out there who play for more than their own fragrance range. Long live The Love Load!
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