Caroliner

by Alex Ross

New York Times, April 15, 1993

Gargoyle Mechanique
28 Avenue B

Of the strange phenomena to emerge from San Francisco in the wake of punk, Caroliner, also known as Caroliner Rainbow Hernia Milkqueen, Caroliner Rainbow Open Wound Chorale, and various other names, is possibly the strangest.  It looks and sounds like no other band, except, in spirit, the Residents.  Before the show on Friday night, three men and two women spent well over half an hour cluttering a tiny stage with decor: Day-Glo orange and yellow hangings, banners, trinkets, toys.  A string of blacklights made the color schemes all too vivid.  The band then disappeared for awhile and re-emerged in delirious fancy-dress costumes, flapping with appendages.  One member played the whole show with a lamp electronically rotating on top of her head.  "Pscyhedelic" doesn't begin to describe it: this is some lost American Baroque, retrieved at rummage sales.

On top of the visual extravagance, Caroliner has somehow forged an original musical style.  The songs typically fuse together a grinding, relentless bass line, country-ish banjo strummings, spastic vocals ranging across several octaves, a wheezing organ drone, and screeching violin tremolos.  Despite the splintered aesthetic, a lumbering grandeur gathers — in "Copper Jaw Ribs," for example, or in "Outhouse of the Pyreeeeeee" (which has been covered by Caroliner's better-known sister band, the Thinking Fellers).  Space does not permit a description of the lyrics, which purport to interpret the prophecies of a 19th-century Wisconsin cow.

On Friday night, the band was in a physically exuberant mood, bordering on the confrontational. The lead singer, known as Grux, lunged repeatedly into the midst of the audience, disconcerting various Lower East Side hipsters.  I can say without exaggeration that I was knocked out of my chair.