Song structure as a confusing mess. Intuitively, beginning with anything other than a verse and warbling some self effacing nonsense seems wrong. Why start it all off with a piece of music devised to take a listener from one part of the song to another? Just start at the beginning and go.

Regardless of whether or not that’s practiced regularly, New Zealand’s the Dead C have seen fit, since the mid eighties, to do just about whatever seems right at either the time of recording or in a live setting. But that’s almost defining the trio in terms too distinct for what it does.

Choosing at random any two albums from the band – and here we’ll reference 1997’s Tusk and a 1995 compilation (although there’s a proper album and a live bit in there) called Trap Fucking Exit – it becomes difficult to distill a specific approach to rock stuffs.

The ensemble’s appreciation of Sonic Youth is well documented – and easily heard. But for the most part, these Antipodes are capacious of moving beyond any perceived restrictions that better known band has bound itself in. Obviously the Sonic Youth dudes moved from its early, almost kraut sounds to a straight noise aesthetic and eventually on to some semblance of pop sensibility, albeit odd. The Dead C, though, seem more comfortable bashing out some inner conception of rhythm and only dashing its music with a vocal every once in a while so as to conjure the history of radio ready pop musics. Deciphering any of it, though, gets a bit tough.

Comparing the these two albums from the Dead C’s oeuvre, though, should allow folks – at least those who happen to be paying attention – to hear the band embrace groove on “Head” from Tusk and even a bit of (almost) pop music on the acoustic versions of efforts tacked onto the end of TFE. None of these works is going to help the band find a wider audience – and even if it did, the fact that the Dead C rarely tour would do too much for it career wise. But forging a relationship, though, now dissolved, with US based Siltbreeze has probably already taken the sometimes noise obsessed trio to a level of visibility it won’t be able to move beyond. That’s how it should be, though. The Dead C, even as it kicked around amidst the Dunedin scene, seems like a weird cult – one that won’t ruin your life, just your ear holes.