BETTAWRECKONIZE, (July 2003):

TURN PALE - 'Kill the Lights' CD
Word on the streets is that this band is "dance punk."  I can see that, but considering the recent outbreak of mohawks trying to get all jiggy with it, you're liable to start thinking that Turn Pale are just another Rapture or Liars clone, and you would be mistaken.  It can only benefit Turn Pale then that they hail from Indiana and not Williamsburg, have midwestern accents instead of English ones, and have a completely healthy Birthday Party fixation.  It could also benefit Turn Pale that three of its members used to be in, quirky pop-destroyers, the Panoply Academy, or that through intensive touring with the likes of Black Eyes and Love Life have garnered a reputation for their intense, over-the-top live shows.  Singer, Michael Anderson, spits poison while his voice contorts and warbles in the same manner that his body does on stage while the band grooves on, anticlimactically through mid-tempoed rhythms and spiked guitar lines.  The fact is that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could find anything to dance to on many of Kill the Lights songs, but those five or six songs that the punks could dance to may cause many, who are sick of the whole Brooklyn scene, to overlook Turn Pale by description.  If you're looking for some exceptional, dark punk that you can occasionally shake that ass to, then Turn Pale could be the cure to your disdain of New York's proprietorship of the term "dance punk."

- Dan Rizer

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