RxGF
Any Other Way
(Orange Allies)

Any Other Way is the fourth release from Brooklyn/Seattle indie-darkwave group RxGF.

Crunchy grit and plunky atmopshere with tom tom backing pushes the title track along, while we get growly voices and a dark jungle beat of Matthew Burgess’ percussion on “How To Make It,” a nod to Siouxsie and The Banshees.

We get the first color of electric guitar and some good melody on “We Will Not Be Denied” with bleed-through keys and what I feel is one of the best vocals here from singer Angeline Schaaf on one of the band’s more realized tunes. “Antidote” gives us that roiling synth noise, akin to NIN and again Shaaf with plodding synth bass parts. The soft keys and snapping beginning to “The Hit” reveals a shunky beat with a male vocal this time and some dramatic synth lines over a building trash dance beat. When I reached the song titled “Kontrollier Die Kontrollierenden,” I suddenly realized that throughout Any Other Way, this four-piece band is as much mining Kraftwork territory as Ultravox, which is what the mix of bleats and burps and toms remind me of on this tune.

“Flow” is all metallic arpeggiating roiling bass synths, very cool stuff, and I’m reminded of Kratfwork again with a hint of Tangerine Dream. I liked this song a lot, though it’s not much of a song overall. John Morgan Reilly’s heavy drumming is very good here though.

There’s a lot of sound to what RxGF manages and a certain attitude one either will take to…or not.