Send "Emperor X " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 Former high school science teacher Chad Matheny returns with Western Teleport, a big frickin’ record that’s not only his Bar/None debut but perhaps his best album to date. Opening with the Fleetwood Mac-ish groove of “Erica Western Teleport”, the record develops in numerous unexpected (well, unexpected from virtually anyone besides Matheny) ways, as it drifts from the suburban dread of “Sig Alert”, into the lo-fi masterpiece “A Violent Translation Of The Concordia Headscarp” and ends with the hallucinatory “Erica Western Teleport Geiger Counter” just over one half hour after it all began. There’s an automatic quality to Matheny’s songwriting, a freedom evident in material such as “Canada Day” and “The Magnetic Media Storage Practices Of Rural Pakistan” that is enviable for its utter lack of pretentiousness, perfect imperfections and ability to touch the soul of the damaged land dweller in most of us. “Defiance (For Elise Sunderhuse)” would be a feel-good hit of the summer on some other planet, somewhere where Sebadoh, Pavement, and Guided By Voices ruled the radio waves, somewhere where you could speak the unmitigated truth the way Matheny does throughout. There are pieces that challenge the listener’s sensibilities more than others: “Anti-Rage” is not as immediately accessible as some of the others and “Sincerely, H.C. Pregerson” is far more acid-drenched than those Flaming Lips boys have ever been and you can almost feel your DNA recombining as you try to decide whether you want to stay with the song or run for more comfortable climes....full text |
| Acousticmusic |
| It's alleged that Emperor X frontman Chad Matheny, formerly a high school science teacher, got his compositional sense from the Pentecostalists' theatrical practice of speaking in tongues. Not that he was doing that, jabbering like a loon, that is, but the guy was using a karaoke machine a local church owned in order to do his own recording. How babblalia figured in is anyone's guess—the geometry is too abstract for me—but it may very well be, as Matheny's compositional practices are attractively odd, a strange sense of Ubu-istic noiseuring, chapelesue propriety, punkerisms, and, of all things, mellow rock resulting in an edgily dreamy whole. The package, though, I'll warn, is little too often mid-fi. The Magnetic Media Storage Practices of Rural Pakistan, for instance, though a clever short package of ideas, is irritating as hell in its wavering soundfield. In fact, Matheny is overflowing with uniquenesses and innovations—even new wrinkles kind of in a lineage with Erik Lindgren, David Cunningham and others—but the presentation doesn't do them justice at all. Of course, the Bar None label, like Twin Tone, Tone Casualties, Matador, and countless others, has never been famed for technical savvy, soooooo…… Indeed, such ventures seem to purposely underwrite inadequacy when it comes to that. Were this entire CD to have been given the luscious Enossificational treatment of Allahu Akbar, Western Teleport would be outstanding…or rather, it IS outstanding but only in conception and half the execution. Matheny's creative ferment is almost without bounds yet the documentary process is just so frequently flawed (and everything in the composer's life surrounding this CD speaks of shoe-stringing), something that should rightfully have earned a lot more studio time and pensivity, not just an on-the-fly, don't-have-the-money, the-label-won't front-me abandonment. Teleport, clocking in at a tad over a half hour, is actually just a mid-ground between extended EP and normal album, but its 11 songs are so damned dense with ingenious touches that the housing suffocates the art. I say: do it all over again under another sponsor, and refurbish the CD into the twistedly pleasant art statement it was meant to be, not an alleyway of blurry detritus with hidden glow....full text |
| Allmusic |
| While Emperor X is, at base, an earnestly quizzical, one-person project from a singer/songwriter obsessed with all things technical and geeky -- the first song on Western Teleport refers to Cylons, USBs, and Tasers, among other things -- the funny thing about Western Teleport is how it sounds and feels like a full band creating something multilayered. That sounds a bit flippant, given how easily and often a performer with the right dedication and talent can now literalize the idea of the one-man-band in the 21st century, but Chad Matheny, following in the footsteps of similarly inclined performers, has fully settled into the textural possibilities such options can provide. His dry but earnest singing, calling to mind the work of equally singular performer Stan Ridgway -- a parallel all the more clear given how still-newish-to-Southern-California Matheny is on Western Teleport, providing a vision of a less glamorous life in L.A., much like Ridgway often has; he settles into arrangements that can, on first blush, seem like indie quirks but avoid sounding cloying. The sense of drama and even a little sternness in the arrangements of "Sig Alert," shimmering guitar to the fore, works just as well as the almost Feelies-like focus on "Defiance," a chance for him to demonstrate his ability to control and extend an arrangement in a great, lengthy ending. When Matheny strips things back down to a simpler approach, it's certainly enjoyable enough. But the crackle of feedback and field recording on "The Magnetic Media Storage Practice," however familiar both as general aesthetic and from his own work, seems less like an approach and more like a slight limitation when new possibilities present themselves, especially ones that work well for him, as on the rushed and full-sounding "Allahu Akbar," one of the few indie rock songs of recent years that makes the full-bodied approach actually sound good instead of like so many warmed-over anthems. One of the many suddenly vivid lines that pop up throughout, from "Canada Day": "She had a great view/but that only counts for the non-blind."...full text |
Emperor X lyrics
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