The Colour revolution has begun
Mississippi native’s latest is one of the year’s best
By Zachary Hoeppner
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The members of Colour Revolt didn’t just appear out of the muck and the mire, but have been carving out musical shapes together since their early days as Fletcher, the late math rock outfit from Oxford, Mississippi.
Colour Revolt, a band that in 2007 went on their first full length tour as the opening act for Brand New, has released a full length studio album with the provocative title, “Plunder, Beg and Curse,” Fat Possum Records 2008.
With this follow up to their 2007 debut, “Colour Revolt EP,” these five college students have taken what you thought you knew about music, chopped it up into a thousand pieces and arranged them in a sonic recipe that is as grizzly as it is majestic.
The members of Colour Revolt didn’t just appear out of the muck and the mire, but have been carving out musical shapes together since their early days as Fletcher, the late math rock outfit from Oxford, Mississippi.
The opening track, “Naked and Red” launches full throttle into an unsettling dissonance and theological commentary.
“A Siren,” follows with a slippery groove that bares its teeth at the ignorance of religiosity. The gritty distance of their three guitar approach creates a volatile space in which Jesse Coppenbarger’s honest melodies labor and play upon each syllable.
“Elegant View” presents a barren landscape repressed by unrelenting heat. The voice of Coppenbarger as he overdrives a dusty microphone conjures images of wasting away in the desert as the wind and biting sand bring no remedy for thirst.
“See it,” a nursery rhyme for the weary, evokes the sound Colour Revolt established on their 2006 debut, a self titled EP recorded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
If this album were the earth, then “Moses of the South” would be the sun around which each note orbits. The familiarity in which this tune resides beckons the listener to participate in a playful sing along.
“I while dancing, horned sirens fly / they cackle at the sun / they’re spitting at the earth / plunder, beg and curse / pure and fearful children flee north,” Coppenbarger relates on this sensitive contrast to the majority of the album’s evocative dissonance.
Scenes of the Mississippi Delta pervade on the blues rooted “Swamp.” Colour Revolt seems to borrow the guts of this tune from the poignant and irresistibly driven sound the band mewithoutYou creates on “Catch for Us the Foxes.”
“Ageless Everytime” manifests a strenuous tension that unfolds as the album’s culminating work of art.
The Mississippi natives exercise their musical vocabulary and captivating musicianship on “Innocent and All,” a tune haunted by the angelic and cavernous voice of Jeff Buckley.
“Shovel to Ground” lays out a straight ahead rock ’n’ roll throwback ridden with clever hooks that attack like a storm upon a seafaring vessel caught in open waters.
Distilled dynamics on “What Will Come of Us?” overflow in splendid ruckus, while overdriven and delayed guitars twist in a series of involuntary convulsions.
With each consecutive listen, the landscapes that Colour Revolt traverse become more alive, like the changing of a complacent winter to a vibrant spring.
This is not an album to set the mood for a candle light diner, nor is it an album to carelessly put on while driving down the freeway. If you do so, beware that neighboring drivers will most likely fear for their lives as you savagely pound on the steering wheel.
You will be lucky to find an album in 2008 that infringes upon your presuppositions of the way music should sound like Colour Revolt’s “Plunder, Beg and Curse.”



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