Tyvek - Origin of What

Pitchfork 78

Tyvek have been going for over a decade, and at different points throughout the Detroit punks’ tenure, at least 22 people have counted among their ranks. Kevin Boyer’s voice, guitar, collaged cover artwork, and lyrics have always been at the band’s center, but he’s quick to point out the obvious—that each contributing member brings something unique to the table. “Tyvek is always changing,” Boyer told Maximum Rocknroll. “There’s always a period of relearning, half-retracing our steps, but we always find ourselves in a different place from where we left off.” They change their approach semi-regularly, but they don’t sound like a brand-new band with every release.

The band’s sound is fairly well-defined. It’s loud punk music, guided by Boyer’s shouted abstract poems. Sometimes the songs are faster, sometimes they’re more anthemic, sometimes they’re choppy, and sometimes they’re all over the place. It really depends on who’s playing. Beyond the more visible albums and singles released by bigger indie labels, they’ve put out piles of CDRs and tapes. Then there’s the sprawl of music released by the members’ other bands. Mountains and Rainbows and the Intended, for example, both had strong debut albums arrive this year. Members of Protomartyr and Saturday Looks Good to Me have played in Tyvek. The list goes on like that for a while.

Tyvek’s new album Origin of What is an acknowledgement of the band’s history; it features seven musicians from across the band’s lineups. Every new song shuffles the players, and other than Boyer, the only constant is Fred Thomas, who recorded the album and drums on 10 of the 12 tracks. Thomas and Boyer go way back: Thomas recorded a 2002 Boyer solo project, and more recently, worked on Tyvek’s On Triple Beams. These two anchors become important when Origin of What weaves between slower, paced material and all-out bashers. The opening two tracks “Tip to Tail” and “Can’t Exist” fall at the rowdier end of the spectrum, showing Tyvek at the height of their kinetic earworm powers. It’s also a one-two that shows a huge range in guitar tone—bleary echoing guitars linger in the background of the former while the latter is all crunch and distortion.

The faster, punchier stuff is counterbalanced by songs like “Origin of What”—a six-minute track with a more gradual, dense tread that addresses U.S. Steel and the decline of the Euro. Boyer has talked about the importance of the “subtle tics” in Tyvek songs, which is true—details and texture are always key to the character of their records. There's a moment on“Choose Once” when once-prominent vocal is suddenly swallowed beneath the song’s huge primary guitar line, as if Boyer’s mic was kicked over. Then there’s “Tyvek Chant,” a song comprised of repeated screams and guitars that seem to come through an AM radio feed, abstracted by crackles and fuzz.

Several pieces on Origin of What show that the Tyvek operation are generally more subtle than their shout-along, high-speed rock‘n’roll masterworks might suggest. “Underwater Three Dub” is the most gentle point of the record—a collaboration between Boyer, Thomas, and Shelley Salant (who makes spacey, hypnotic instrumental guitar records under the name Shells). While this melody floats and shimmers, Boyer sings a mantra of sorts: “No limits. Smash limits.” Aided by the instincts of his collaborators, Boyer threads together these wordy, detail-stuffed songs that are fast and staid, intense and gentle, paranoid and curious. Punk can be uniform and boring. By spreading out and proving adept at several modes, Tyvek show that this music can be plenty inclusive—that there are no limits.