Operation Mockingbird

“Inertia & Ritual,” by Operation Mockingbird

California band Operation Mockingbird doesn’t hide the fact that it’s trying to take the listener on a trip. Indeed, the opening track of its most recent album, “Inertia & Ritual,” starts right in with a low, brooding gloom enveloping a sample of Alan Watts discussing the effects of LSD on perception. The song, “Introspective,” makes for an unnerving entryway into the album’s world, but if one’s brave enough to make the leap, there’s a lot to be discovered. Comprising vocals and synthesizers by The Janell, and bass, guitar, drums and more synthesizers by Scott C., the pair manage to create an immensely large-feeling sound. It’s ominous and heavy, in that old-school Nick Cave or PJ Harvey sort of way, and like those two, there’s a heavy rock edge that cuts through the fog, forcing the listener deeper and deeper into the dark. The album begins in earnest with “The Man,” in which Janelle’s low whiskey vocals become the music’s compass. At six songs, it’s not a terribly long album, but it manages to create a rich study in textures. “The Fix,” for instance, drives with slow, heavy bass, whereas the subsequent song, “With Knives,” is defined by the thin, sharp points of percussion — pinprick lights disappearing and reappearing in the night. By the time the album winds down to the penultimate track, “Pretty Little Dove,” it’s almost startling the way its persona becomes more assertive: “I will make you want me,” she sings, and it comes off as a threat. The album’s earlier aloofness giving way to something more predatory, signaled both in a change of tone and by the subtle frazzle of electric guitar. The album closes with “Something More,” ostensibly a “bonus track” which appears on Spotify but not on Bandcamp if you’re streaming for free. It’s a cool little bit of punk rock discord, with disembodied vocals and driving drums and guitar. At the end, it feels like the listener is exiting the fog, but at the price of everything falling apart, and maybe that was the point all along. — Victor D. Infante, Telegram & Gazette - Telegram Worcester, MA

This release gives me very mixed feelings. On the one hand, this is one of those cases where the recording quality greatly affects the entire album atmosphere and is unfortunately not in the best way, but there is still quite subjective.

But it gives a unique feeling. if the gray clouds look straight at you from their icy gaze pours rain, which if they were piercing gaze to the bone and bone marrow. What remains unhappy man? Just wrap yourself in something that little bit repelled the wet look, and lowered his head to have a cigarette burn out his last seconds of life. Under the pressure of life and the circumstances of a man's soul has long faded. Let even allow himself a cigarette burn to the end like a phoenix. - vk.com

“This month's featured track comes from Operation Mockingbird, a rather fine post-punk band from Orange County in the US, who've had us dancing round the cowshed and shimmying against the Aga at Sixx Acres. A bona fide classic.”
“This next featured band is Operation Mockingbird, a two piece from Orange County, CA, USA. They’re a female fronted post punk band and draw their influences from the early goth and post punk records that they grew up with. They sent me this track, and I’m in love with it. So from Operation Mockingbird, here is The Fix”
“I absolutely love that. Operation Mockingbird, The Fix” - Dark Frequency