Chavez - Cockfighters EP

Pitchfork 72

Normally, the arrival of new recordings by a beloved rock band after a 20-year hiatus is accompanied by all manner of fanfare. No so with Chavez. Everything surrounding the return of this beloved indie group has run counter to the norm.

Cockfighters, the quartet’s first studio effort since 1996, is a mere three songs, done and dusted in less than 10 minutes. And while their longtime label Matador did their best to coordinate a splashy premiere from “The Bully Boys,” the EP’s snaky closing track, the band sent their publicists scrambling by dropping it a few days early on their Facebook page. There has been no talk of extensive touring or TV appearances or even a full-length album on the horizon. Like it or not, it seems this is all we’re getting. Abbreviated as it may be, though, Cockfighters burns hot and bright, recapitulating the strengths of the group while emphasizing how they’ve grown as musicians over the past two decades.

Drummer James Lo exhibits this more than anyone here. On previous Chavez albums (1995’s Gone Glimmering and Ride the Fader from a year later), he locked in with steady force behind the spinning guitar duets of Clay Tarver and Matt Sweeney. These new recordings, particularly on “Bully” and the slowly engulfing “Blank in the Blaze,” turn Lo into a caustic element, sparking and rumbling through each jazzy breakbeat and double-time stomp.

The rest of the band—Tarver, Sweeney, and bassist Scott Marshall—opt for a more minimal sound. There are minor flare ups, such as the guitar solo that streaks through the middle of “The Singer Lied” like a small lightning storm, and the closing minutes of “Blank,” where Sweeney and Tarver ooze their individual hues together to create dazzling new colors. But everywhere else, the emphasis is on creating something hypnotic and trancelike with the incessant repetition of Eastern-inspired melodies.

Cockfighters doesn’t strike any bold new paths for the group, but Chavez have matured as artists and songwriters, and this EP slots into their catalog well. They’ve all got day jobs now; they can return on their own terms. (Tarver is a staff writer and co-executive producer on HBO’s “Silicon Valley,” and Sweeney is a well-regarded session player who has lent his talents to Billy Corgan’s supergroup Zwan, Cat Power, and Kid Rock.) It has to help, too, knowing that their previous work has only grown in stature in the years since the first two albums were released. They’ve garnered enough respect for their work to warrant a three disc CD/DVD retrospective in 2006 and vinyl reissues of their LPs in 2015. While most groups live and die by the flame bursts of hype they can conjure online, the men of Chavez are happy to toss another log on the fire and let it slowly smolder.