Adult Punks Debt Rag continue to demonstrate the explosive potential of cooperative collaboration. It Is Clear What’s Going On gives us a window into their shared brain, which is encapsulated on tape as one throbbing, glittering whole. Listening to this record is like peering through the keyhole into the practice space, encountering a riot of color and experimentation, peppered with peals of laughter. Debt Rag are laughing — no, not at you, but also not with you. Debt Rag are only concerned with Debt Rag and the joyful noise that comes from making music with your most generative collaborators.
These songs contain possibility, and not in the abstract. What is the tonal range of a single cymbal? How many different vocalizations can three people make? What is the emotional potential of a trumpet? Debt Rag both asks and answers. Their music is far ranging, totally free, but never self-indulgent. Whether continuing in the trio’s long-standing tradition of anti-society anthems (“Gary’s World,” “Syzygy”) or collaging the detritus of a band practice (“Drumbo 2,” “Smartest Musicians”) these are careful compositions with thrilling logics of their own invention. Every song is a little world, resonant, razor-sharp, with total clarity of vision. Debt Rag is as Debt Rag does. We could all learn a thing or two.
