Difficult, lengthy, uncompromising, sparse, martial and brilliant, the Ex's sound on 2010's Catch My Shoe has now streamlined into a unique three-guitar and drums lineup, with longtime member Andy Moor and founder Terrie Ex trading off on baritone guitars as required. Now that there's no permanent bassist (Rozemarie, the band's last bassist, left in 2005; the last Ex album, Turn, was from 2004, so this version of the Ex has been a while aborning), and an odd, crunching, often chordal and mid-ranged low end, the ensemble sound has become so dry, harsh and angular that it's almost like boards rubbing on sandpaper, with Katrin Ex's astonishing, idiosyncratic and totally distinctive drumming more than ever the engine and heartbeat of the band. While enjoyably African-tinged horn parts add some needed spice to a few songs early in the album, most noticeably on opener and viciously complex, catchy single "Maybe I Was The Pilot," mostly it's three snarling guitars and drums all the time.
Lyrically, the album is as political, outspoken, and astringent as ever; "Cold Weather Is Back" is the clear highlight on this front, depicting a possible apocalypse in a way which typically manages to be insightful, plausible, witty, despairing, chilling and overwhelmingly defiant all at once. Perhaps most staggeringly, it isn't at all cliched. Most native speakers of English couldn't put together a lyric this well-written, never mind this smart. The Ex's mastery of a language that isn't their own is one of their least-remarked upon strengths as a group. For a band so truly political, they are almost never preachy, and they never fail to make their points deeply understood. The happiest song on the album, pointedly, is the one song that isn't in English - "Eoleyo," a cheery, thorny and infectious interpretation of an Ethiopian song sung wonderfully by Katrin, who always gets one turn at the mic per album and never, ever disappoints.
Arnold de Boer, on vocals and guitar, replaces founder singer and frequent lyricist G. W. Sok on this album. As lead singer, Sok embodied the Ex as much as Terrie, Andy and Katrin did; while de Boer just isn't as marvelously caustic or charismatic as Sok always was - in short, he's not his equal as a frontman - he demonstrates a similar facility for winning the listener's respect through sheer force of intelligence and has a similarly punkish though much more note-oriented vocal approach. de Boer almost never shouts on this album, which is something Sok did really, really well - instead, he sings with an impassioned, slightly strained but on-key voice that imparts nothing so much as commitment to the material. Instrumentally, he proves himself time and time again, which is notable for a new player making his debut with such a well-oiled instrumental unit - then again, it's almost impossible to tell who does what with guitars on this record, as the parts are all so intertwined and knotty that to pick out one part for praise would be entirely against the point.
The Ex's classic albums always depended on fearsomely smart instrumental interplay, but this one in particular takes that approach to places that even the Ex haven't charted before; at some level, it sounds the same as they have since the mid-'90's, but it's even more distilled than many of those albums were. This is an album made by people who have developed a simultaneously intuitive and strictly disciplined rapport with each other as musicians, and they have taken their craft to master levels. Though the album is so unforgiving that making it all the way through can be quite hard, Catch My Shoe is the type of album most bands could not ever even conceive of making - especially this late in the game. At a time when The Ex could conceivably rest on their laurels - it's their latest album in a career that has consistently amazed since 1978 - they seem to discard that possibility with increasing force as the years progress.
Final Verdict: Catch My Shoe is an undoubtedly hard, but extraordinarily rewarding listen.
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