Negativland

Having survived everything from self-created media stirs over mass murder to, most infamously, the U2 single incident and its various repercussions, Negativland entered a new decade still on top of its game but more interested than ever in sound and music for its own sake. Hints of this were evident on the True/False tour in 2000, most especially a striking orchestrated composition that hit a wondrous level of grandeur. Death Sentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak, however, steers clear of something so straightforward for a more chaotic and, in ways, retrospective release. For the first time in nearly 20 years, a formal Negativland release came out with no immediately obvious overarching concept or story, as well as for the first time ever absolutely no lyrics. However, there is a theme; as designed and presented, the accompanying booklet (in the shape of an auto-repair manual) details what allegedly were letters, writings, and notes found in a variety of wrecks taken from fatal car collisions. Whether or not any of this is real is beside the point, given how Negativland has so carefully worked with conceptions of reality for all of its career. But with the band's explanation of the album being the supposed "destruction of its studio," the music functions as its own equivalent document after an accident. Fellow travelers such as Jon Land and People Like Us provide "sonic contributions" to the 12-track effort, which really is one extended piece, blending in hints of glitch techno with the band's more familiar collage of samples (often heavily echoed), clattering noise, and musical snippets. The result is a free-flowing, just-cohesive-enough 45-minute listen that, in keeping with the booklet contents, has an air of strange melancholy throughout, perhaps most evident on the album's haunting heart, "Cherry." ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide