Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw of Parts & Labor met while working at the Knitting Factory, an iconic Manhattan venue, just before the turn of the century. It was an auspicious introduction for two musicians who would launch a noise-rock institution that helped lead he city’s underground resurgence in the early 2000s. While more overtly political and less commercially successful than their contemporaries, Parts & Labor stood alongside bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and LCD Soundsystem while owing more to free jazz and avant-garde. Over the course of five albums, they sharpened their squall into anthemic noise-punk before calling it quits after 2011’s Constant Future.
Anyone expecting age to have mellowed them on Set of All Sets, their first record in 15 years, should know better. There is no paring down, no dimming of spirits. The unhinged and impossibly kinetic drumming of original drummer (and music journalist) Christopher Weingarten finds equal ground with drummer Joe Wong, who had replaced Weingarten in 2008 and accompanied the group’s more melodic later work. Across 17 tracks, guitar riffs curdle into sheets of distortion, melodies dissolve into electronic hiss, and grooves are chronically interrupted by fresh rhythmic detours.
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Set of All Sets does a lot. The music funnels the breakneck propulsion of 2006’s Stay Afraid and 2007’s Mapmaker but also the compositional patience of 2008’s Receivers and Constant Future. A highlight like “Many Worlds” never settles for just one texture. Is it a noise-rock assault, a motorik groove, or a shimmering piece of electronic psychedelia? Why choose now when you can spend nearly eight minutes deciding?
From a less skillful band, the album’s longest track, “Indecision Tree,” could come across as an indulgent mess. But each of its eight-and-a-half minutes introduces a subtle mutation, rotating buzzing electronics and quivering guitars into the spotlight. They apply the same process to the volatile “Seamripper,” with its stacked timbral layers and the synthesizers occupying the same frequency range as the wailing guitars.
One of the album’s pleasant surprises is its embrace of melody. The broad, open-throated chorus of “Like They’re Here to Stay” comes closest to sounding like an anthem, as the bright, bell-like synthesizer chimes through its gyre of distortion. Even the title track sounds a bit like a post-hardcore hymnal, its central melody broad and reverent and its chorus offering a cryptic transmission about living in the present: “There is no time/Like the ere tomorrow/Pseudoprime/’Til we find the aught to follow.” With Set of All Sets, the band wants to prove that the old machine runs hotter, louder, and messier than ever.
