The Pierce Kingans- Pièrce de Résistance

By Keir Nicoll

Pierce Kingan, a man who sings about dancing in the phosphorous light, in the night. A very hot visual from a sexy man who is expressing his motivations to movement and motion in the dance of the sexual-survival. His band, The Pierce Kingans, have released their 9th EP, Pierce de Resistance. Sounding like Kyuss meets Smashing Pumpkins, in the 80s-90s soundings of the songs, this band has a really keen sensualism, that reaches out to the ears through their repetitions of rocking rhythm. He also sings about opportunities and entropy - seemingly opposite things but that he seems to be able to make some sense of. There is the very hot punk, of "Territorial Pissings," Nirvana but it is also the rawness of eat-when-you-feel-like-it, brutal and barroom punk-rock. But, it all comes back to the sensuality of the singer, who is wooing you into his internal climes of spiritual elation and despair. There seems to be profound energy to move, contained in simple lines.  In "White Phosphorus," Kingan sings about burning bright beneath the phosphorous light. He intones, over and over again, that it's jus like love - "White Phosphorous" It's a sad and profound statement about the nature of human relationships. Asking if love is free and something he said is true. He says we are the "Captains of our own demise," in "Opportunity Opus," along with other polemical poetics about self-inflicted-or-inflected destinies. He pleads for solitude. "Entropy 2" is much more poppy, with a lead guitar-line that is very catchy, performed by Jordan Heaney. It seems like Kingan is very happy to be singing about the dispersion of matter. Some people fear it but he seems to enjoy the perspective of the loss of stability or stable reality. "Proximity Pity" is seemingly about the fact that "nobody cares." These songs are by turn a wash of blurring pop-80s-punk and perky-percolating upbeat, catchy numbers. Like the album cover, that shows the naked torso of a young man, with his head blurred in a spinning trajectory of shaking, these songs will send you off into another domain.