Please Don’t Fight in Here by War Room

There’s always room in our lives for introspection, but the type of extreme navel gazing that Australian experimental post punk outfit War Room responds to in Please Don’t Fight in Here can leave us paralyzed at best and self-destructive at worst. Aesthetically, this record juggles an extreme diversity of styles, smoothing over its angular math rock riffs with traditional folk fiddle, then breaking into staccato post punk segments that devolve into aggressive, difficult post rock anti-harmonies. Add in a smattering of shockingly catchy choruses and extended segments of free jazz deconstruction and you get a virtually unrepeatable formula, a sonic fingerprint so undeniable as to instantly carve out a permanent home in the scene for this band on their first full-length release. Through the album’s wildly unhinged lyricism, we realize that this creative miracle has trapped us in the speaker’s over-indulgent mind, stewing in the guilt and fear that accompanies a retreat from the outside world as we recognize the ways that we build similar defense systems around ourselves.