January 1, 1999
The Third Meeting At The Third Counter
Sooner or later, a record like this was bound to emerge from America....
8 / 10
Sooner or later, a record like this was bound to emerge from America. Satisfact are four young pretty guys from Olympia, Washington, and 'The Third Meeting...' is their third album, though the first of any real significance. A wired fusion of synthetic sound and urgent, paranoid guitars, this is the record Placebo would die to make, and the one Elastica should pay attention to. Satisfact have taken their love of Magazine, Sonic Youth, Gang Of Four and Joy Division, whittled out the excess and married the remaining nervous tension to a thrillingly dynamic vision of pop music.
This is no bleak '80s revivalism, though, because Satisfact even manage to make post-rock exciting: the taut shiver of 'Vortex' and 'Upon Arrival''s synthesised malevolence address areas too obviously normal for Tortoise and Trans Am, warping them into neurotic melody.
Neither is this an exercise in nihilistic Numan-esque minimalism. In fact, Satisfact are at their best when, on 'Locate' and 'Triple Deck', they blend searing, bruised energy and drum clatter with Chad States' restless vocal. Full-blooded songs with garbled, frantic messages. Possibly alien abduction, possibly they've just run out of peanut butter. Either way, this is sassy, Brit-obsessed Americana sans trash with a dazzling mind of its own.
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