The Ex

Catch My Shoe (self-released)

By Jennifer Kelly
Published: February 3rd, 2011 | 7:00am

Last year, well into its third decade in punk innovation, the Ex lost its voice, its face and a big part of its identity when founding member G. W. Sok departed the band. The Dutch experimenters chose Arnold De Boer, who heads the Dutch avant-garde band Zea, as its new singer. The new addition works well. De Boer’s delivery is as intense as Sok’s but slightly more melodic. On it's latest album, Catch my Shoe, with De Boer and fellow new member Roy Paci on horns, the Ex is able to replicate the swing and swagger of their earlier collaboration with Ethiopian bandleader Getachew Merkurya.

Longtime members Andy Moor, Katherina Bomefeld, and Terrie Hessels provide The Ex’s basic template of galloping rhythms, staccato guitar riffs and politically charged vocals. There’s no fat. Highlights include “Double Order,” a rampaging, pummeling number with assaulting baritone guitar lines providing an interesting change of pace from bass, and the swaggering, brass-punching, post-apocalyptic “Cold Weather Is Back.”

The Ex’s long, fruitful fascination with African music turns up in several places throughout Catch My Shoe. Opener “Maybe I Was the Pilot” was based on a riff borrowed from the Ugandan artist Iganitiyo Ekacholi. “Eoleyo,” sung by Bomefeld, is a boxy, aggro-punk take on a traditional Ethiopian song, which members of the Ex first heard on a Mahmoud Ahmed cassette. All these changes – the new singer, the brass, the African shadings – sound like a much-needed reboot of the Ex’s aesthetic. Catch My Shoe is one of the band’s best albums to date, denser, more rhythmically complex and more musical than past efforts.

__

The Ex official site