Artist: The Circus
Album: Bats
Label: Independent
Release Date: December, 2012
Okay, so I was watching an episode of Gossip Girl (I’m not proud of it, but there was nothing else on TV) when I decided to pop in this record. I set the channel on mute and the first track that began was the title track “Bats”. Right then, on the show, there was whole bunch of bitchiness going on at a high profile party – rich douches acting like rich douches (pardon my French). And you know what? The music fit the situation like a glove – shiny exterior but a dirty core. Maybe the guys at the show have a new soundtrack – and trust me … I mean that in the nicest way possible.
Let me set the context of the band here – the circus being referred to here is not the innocent variety where we went as kids and saw a Maruti 800 drive around in rings on a circular wall; this is the Circus of the Damned, born out of the schizophrenic mind of an insomniac in an asylum – where the trivialities of everyday life are magnified for the sole purpose of focusing on all their Technicolor grotesque.
Based on what I’ve written above, one might be tempted to ask – so what exactly are these guys? Well, The Circus are a bit of rarity in that respect – they harken back to simpler times – when Nine Inch Nails wrote “Wish” and Marilyn Manson came out with “Astonishing Panorama of the End Times” – when grotesque was finally brought out of the closet and made an acceptable part of who we are. The band takes all that dirty and throws it full force into the present, with a little bit of everything along the way thrown into the mix.
And probably the dirtiest of their songs is the opener – it grabs you by the balls and refuses to let go… an urgent and psychotic track: just the thing to set the mood for the album. But from thereon in, it’s like you’ve revealed your ace – the other tracks are good, some very good even… but just not good enough. I wish Bats was further down on the tracklist – I think I would’ve enjoyed the album even more. And the more I think about it, I realize that the best tracks on the album are all about three minutes long – pop music of a disenfranchised generation that’s slowly starting to lose its mind. But rather than romanticize and dive headlong into the muck and slime, musically The Circus stand more as dispassionate observers wearing black suits and sunglasses without an expression on their face.
The best thing about the album is the breadth of genres that it manages to cover during its playtime – electronic, rock, punk, alternative, nu-metal … and the list goes on – I don’t know about everyone else but I heard everything from Depeche Mode to AFI, from Papa Roach to Tool on this album… If I had one criticism, it is that the songs don’t really sound as different from each other as the review thus far suggests – something I realized when I sat through the album… after the first couple of tracks, none of the songs surprised me anymore… And if that sounds like I’m being a bit unreasonable, it’s because I probably am – the album’s just that solid. “Bats” is the kind of album I would love to hear more Indian bands strive towards – whatever it may or may not be no one will be able to deny that it is original. A couple of weeks ago, when reviewing Virgin Creep’s EP, I talked about a new generation of Indian rock bands that’s making it difficult for plain vanilla bands to stand out by pushing the musical boundaries farther into the unknown. The bands on that list are among the bands in India I admire the most. And after listening to this album…. I’m adding The Circus to that list.
