Sick swill from the Philly gutters, Laughing Tears pours down from our face
thick like soup, mixing with sweat and fog and grease and wiz, a slurry of
toxic tones from glowing Casios emitting carcinogenic vapor. Nina Ryser puts
the “w wav” in “new wave,” opting for angularity over smooth forms. Sometimes
lurching like an oversuited David Byrne but also just as sometimes reeling like
an underhatted Mark Mothersbaugh (or just cooking in the lab like … a scientist
with synthesizers … with Laetitia Sadier!), Ryser flits like Beaker from beaker
to beaker to make sure the Bunsen burners aren’t overcooking the sauce. But
there one is, boiling a tune to vapor; there’s another, coating and crusting
the sides of everything it sprays; there’s a third, congealing into paste
following a wind-gust-related flame mishap. I’m not doing the dishes.
The sauce is the boss, and we live to see its
effects. Laughing Tears fires
cylinders of enthusiasm through the mechanics of industrial waveforms, the
pistons becoming coated and cracked by energetic use. And yet the
cocked-and-loaded melodic structures puncture the attention of everyone racing
to the toolbox with an idea, an addendum. Such eagerness Laughing Tears inspires! Nina Ryser is nothing if not the
torchbearer of excitement, a visionary of skewed concoctions and othered song
cycles. Also a pretty inventive songwriter, if you want it plain.
--Ryan
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