PC Worship

Musical labels are hard to attach to Justin Frye’s pet project, PC Worship. Similarly, Frye, also of Gary War and Teeth Mountain, has a hard time himself attaching a meaning to the acronym that begins the band’s name. From personal computer and politically correct to Phil Collins and “Pantera [is] cool,” each definition seems fitting as a conceptual approach in defining PC Worship’s music.

Akin to this idea of blending genres and meanings, PC Worship’s music is a constant sonic collage featuring numerous instruments. The band members live together in a Brooklyn warehouse and are said to have hundreds of instruments (horns, strings, woodwinds, pianos, percussion) stacked up for use at any moment. Listening to one of PC Worship’s tracks is as much a psychedelic journey as it is a lesson in how to collapse as many seemingly uncommon sounds into the tiniest space possible. Tracks like “Staring at the Sun” and “Wake Up in the Dark” owe as much to Daniel Johnston and early lo-fi Beck as they do the proto-punk and fragmented jazz that many of their tracks venture toward.

While being compared to Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, PC Worship seem to have less to prove than the West Coast band that has become one of indie pop’s weirdest trophy names. PC Worship’s music has more of an experimental attitude, sprawling into dark forests of free-form jazz much before attempting to find a pop hook.  Frye and company are a bunch of dudes living it up—jamming in a garage and releasing tons of seven-inch vinyl singles, CD-Rs and cassettes with a raw sound that lends itself well to those media choices. Frye sometimes performs alone; other times he runs with a gang of collaborators, The Mutant Soul Band. Either way, get ready to rock perfectly and weirdly. —Jedidiah Gant