Album Review: Butterfly Bat by Skateboard Dinosaur
When it comes to Dinosauria in rock and roll, most will immediately think of pivotal alternative act Dinosaur Jr. or English glam rock pioneers T. Rex. To make a relative analogy of Dinosauria, these would be the Saurischia who devoured their prey alive leaving what is a new generation of Ornithischia. These Ornithischians scour the prehistoric internet world searching for fresh cultivars of band name fauna in music scenes where every good name has seemingly already been taken.
As such you encounter a wild Skateboard Dinosaur, a band from Kelowna B.C. with a name plainly resultant of tireless D.I.Y. web mapping by an artist in search of idyllic originality. Looking at the other varieties of modern internet Dinosauria, you encounter much in way of Dinosaur Jr. influence by way of bands such as English alt rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up, Toronto’s Dinosaur Bones, or the stellar American Dinosaur from Philadelphia. Most of what you will encounter falls into indie art punk or experimental emo with a far reach of under the radar acts such as Jesus The Dinosaur, Dinosaur Skull Tattoo, Dinosaur Gala, or Future Dinosaurs all releasing genuine material to virtually no fanfare.
Following in step with the solo band success of fellow B.C. indie punk act Youth Fountain, Charles Furney has created an eclectic act ripped out of a magazine from a non-existent music scene in his imagination. From a background of twilight era early 2000s post-hardcore, Furney performed vocals first for TheBleedingAlarm and then for, what is by reputation, the Canadian Saosin: Secret and Whisper. The latter would go on to be categorized as Swancore (bands influenced by Will Swan of Dance Gavin Dance), though his stylings in TheBleedingAlarm predate this connotation.
Perhaps it was the usage of Dinosaur Jr.'s Kracked in Toy Machine’s Good & Evil that prompted the Skateboard in Skateboard Dinosaur, Furney himself having an imaginative sketch art output of the Templeton ilk. The post punk flourishes hinted through many songs, particularly Late Bloom, bring a wider palette of classic skate video music to the fore. A lead-in to the chorus on Surf & Die invites, “If you wanna take a ride, come along surf and die” while underscored post punk is stripped away right in time for a plateauing centrepiece simply not possible in the sphere of formulaic Swancore.
Even more challenging is the one-off screamo excursion of Guts Noir (there are hints of it such as Surf & Die’s panicked background scream “1-2-3-4” from his ghost track performing his own drums). In what appears to be a sincere show of imitation flattery, vocal cues from the short-lived Toronto screamo band Animal Faces are cast into what is one of the album’s only clearly definable band influences.
For fans of his previous music, some of the depths reached here may be less a requirement as the strangely cool wistful gospelizing over piano on Hands of Gold. The schizophrenically chaotic blast beating on intro Bat Tattoos in turn is half the tale. Many of the songs are calming displays of clean vocal mastery. The subtle ebbs hidden within the continually disorienting song endings are what tie it all together. And so the Skateboard Dinosaur laments to himself, as if in his own bedroom, 3 words: “I won’t cry.”