Salon de la Guerre - Standing Close To Power and Catching Its Cold

​Salon de la Guerre

Standing Close To Power and Catching Its Cold
self-released; 2024

​By ​Dino DiMuro

Eric Randolph Rasmussen of New York is a prolific recording artist known as Salon de la Guerre. He’s released 40 albums and over 500 songs. It seems every time I wake up there’s a new album! He’s been reviewed on Pitch Perfect several times (twice by me) and he seems to change up his approach slightly with every new project. His newest album (at least this week) is titled Standing Close To Power and Catching Its Cold (he also comes up with great titles!).

Rasmussen describes this album as “another punk-pop work, though with more of a twin-guitar approach than past efforts.” As always, Rasmussen plays all the guitar parts on a Fender Stratocaster and programs the bass, drums and synths in Logic Pro X. In the past I’ve described the Salon project as being like an experimental power trio over which a poet pontificates, or with a crazed keyboard player going off on his own tangents. Though Rasmussen doesn’t say so, I found this newest collection to be highly reminiscent of the Captain Beefheart classics “Trout Mask Replica” and “Lick My Decals Off, Baby.” It would make sense as many of the early punks were Beefheart acolytes, and I count myself among them. As such I’m ecstatic over these new songs, but they may take some getting used to for the “Normies.”

The album starts innocently enough with “This Town Needs Secrets” which features an infectious rock beat with a cool keyboard bass patch that follows Rasmussen’s vocals note-for-note. Rasmussen says the album’s songs are about “gossipy small towns and tense interpersonal relationships, examining the things that boil under the surface in our domesticity.” The guitars are loud but not far from a traditional garage band, like early Who or Kinks. “You Only Like Things New” follows with another classic punk rock arrangement with even faster drums and an endearing, sincere lead vocal. The playing is fast, highly energetic and hard not to groove along with. 

With “Local Boy Makes Wood” (LOVE that title) we enter the Beefheartian phase, with both guitars slashing out jagged chord creations alongside bass lines that would make Rockette Morton proud. Rasmussen finds the vocal center in the miasma, but with this kind of music you get points just for keeping up! The vocals drop out for the final minute and you really get a blast of the “Trout Mask” sound. “Polly Emory” (let’s just posit that all the titles here are great) continues the jagged dueling Fenders with that same aggressive beat. Rasmussen even dares to sing harmonies! “Ariel Despite” starts out a bit more traditionally punk from the Minutemen school, but then gets crazy again. I love all the dramatic pauses he builds into his music. “Incident at the Cape May Hot Dog Eating Contest” is notable for the two guitars slamming out powerful chords, but each with its own distinct sound (one trebly, one with more bass). 

“The Sound of One Hand Crying” takes a short detour into more traditional ballad rock, with an almost pretty sequence on the guitars. The drums also move away from the fast one-two beat for more of a tumbling, jungle-like pattern. “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Metal” came on while I was driving and I immediately loved the title and vocal ideas, though the music is definitely not “heavy metal.” The repeating and interweaving guitar figures have a robust energy that I could not get enough of as I swerved through traffic. The closing track “The World’s Pain Leaked Through Her Shirt” changes things up with player-piano melodies apparently written on the keyboard and cranked up to a Zappa-like tempo, trading rhythmic and melodic patterns with the jumpy, tight drum arrangement. After all that came before, this song feels almost classical!

Like bomb-seeking radar, those who love this type of music will quickly lock into the jagged frequencies of this album. For anyone else looking to be surprised or challenged, you just might a great time riding the rapids of these wild tunes. Love it!

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