Chotto Ghetto

Sparkles

Los Angeles’ Chotto Ghetto have been churning out a bizarre melding of alt-metal/rock and post-hardcore for some time now, with this full-length for Asian Man Records perhaps the biggest scale to showcase their strange sounds. It’s not a bad starting point for newcomers, thankfully.

Sparkles is a sprawling 49 minutes where seemingly anything goes: creepy, Tom Waits-ish grit (opener “Tabula Rasa”); a sarcastic spoken-word rant akin to Say Anything’s “Admit It!!!” (“These Kids Crave Discipline”); Regina Spektor-like a cappella (“Bermuda”); a lounge-jazz interlude with understated vocals (“New Atlantis”), like something from the Dillinger Escape Plan’s last few efforts; and a walk through a bustling urban area where you nearly get accosted by a vicious junkyard dog (“Papi”)—it’s all here. Things definitely get wonky at times (“Pet Gold” literally sounds like it’s about having a pet and painting it gold), but the band offer plenty of interesting parts (the gnarly riffing on “Ghost Finders,” the hardcore-addled head-bobbing of “Drive Time”) and a number of home-run hooks (“Starvation Lake,” first-person stalker anthem “Diana”).

Attempts at guessing the band’s cornerstone influences are basically stabs in the dark. The ambitious, creative mystique of Glassjaw has seemed to long cloud their songwriting, though, and on Sparkles it’s no different, from the Daryl Palumbo-like quaver on “Starvation Lake,” “Snake Bumby” and “Do You Hear The Things” to the familiarly pummeling bridge of “These Kids Crave Discipline”; the latter actually appears to take some sort of hardcore scene to task on their closed-mindedness, perhaps to CG’s music. Speaking of creative hardcore acts, the upper-register shout of another Daryl comes to mind on “Snake Bumby,” “Drive Time” and “Diana”: Snapcase’s Daryl Taberski.

It takes a few listens to let everything Chotto Ghetto are trying sink in, but there are surefire moments on Sparkles that reward such patience.

Asian Man http://www.asianmanrecords.com

“Starvation Lake”