Album Review Quasi - Breaking the Balls of History

Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss are already ledgered in the prestigious Sub Pop pantheon. While Quasi themselves stand proud with a catalogue of alt-classics from the late ‘90s and beyond, their individual CVs alone are enough to boast about. Returning with this tenth studio album - their first in a decade – ‘Breaking the Balls of History’ withstood a broken collar bone, two broken legs (Janet suffered a horrific car crash in 2019) and a pandemic in order to whirlwind itself into existence. And the result is an effervescence of headlong, wind-slicing garage-rock that’s equal parts brazen, jubilant and loud. Propelled across its twelve tracks with eruptions of keyboard overdrive, cannoning drums, and Sam’s corn dog vocals - think Stephen Malkmus after a hat-trick of Red Bulls - Quasi land someplace cool between corny absurdity, and wry sincerity. Littered with askew lyrical turns - “I was a teenage porcupine / A bed of nails running up my spine” – ‘Breaking…’ offers up a feast of exuberance, standout track ‘Riots and Jokes’ musically epitomising the album’s forward-charging freedoms, and neatly sums up Quasi’s modus operandi there in its very title.