Taut scuffed-up punk rock, male/female vocals trading off verses of violence and confrontation, biting and sneering amongst half-buried leads, and jaunting. Run Me Up the Flagpole strikes a rebel pose, daring attack, with a guitar part that sort of dances away and reminds me, of all things, of Boney M's Rasputin. Far Away moves in a bit slowly, but then rattles into life with snotty scraped-throat despair, but it's wish for self-oblivion is less total, and more like a tossed-off fucked-off moment of failure. Berlin Night Life flips rapidly through a procession of history, bloodshed and panic, "Riots in the air/Night of long knives/Smash up all the houses/Steal my neighbour clothes", society breaking down, repeating through the years, wrong lashed upon wrong and moving on with it. Lost Decade hits flatter at first, a circular little riff, the vocals matter-of-fact "They'll pull your number sometime/When you least expect them to". There's a DK surf bit, rolling with tension, snapping back into chorus and these choruses aren't communal singalongs, they not cathartic, they're deliberate and ruthless, uncompromising truths of the inner pain of Far Away and the rampages of Berlin Night Life drawn together. Punk rock, poking with the catchiness and swerve of poppier forms, skatepunk, gruffer pop-punk, and the grit of darker moments.
Thursday, 9 January 2014
Sunday, 5 January 2014
The Love Triangle - Clever Clever
Rumbling propulsive 77 punk punch. There are bits of power-pop smoothness, bits of garage-punk snot, closest in make-up maybe to straight-up punk bands like The Pigs or The Radiators, all those little first wave hangers on cranking out jumpy punk runarounds, or KBD soulpunk flashes like The Law's Hole in my Heart, in terms of more modern bands, it recalls stuff like the Exploding Hearts and their throwback rock and roll edge, but while bands like that are built more around the jab and itch of the guitar, Clever Clever for the most part tumbles along in the wake of the throb of the bass, scampering this way and that, hitched to the low-end. Yeah there are aggressively infectious guitar lines like on the vituperous Just You Wait ("Just you wait til I get cancer!"), or the suave spikepop of The Wait, the grubby needling of Swift Exit, but really this album feels meaty and blocky in its construction, feels deep and gutsy and bolted confidently to its own engine.
The Wait, Just You Wait, the chug and pump of I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, tension infects this album, the songs woundtight and cramped, pushed together and ready to snap, ready to spool out with snaking chaos, degrade and roll over the hill sad and old, like the promises of Just You Wait and Be Old Soon, it's an album aware of what lays ahead, so it crackles and dances with what life it has now.
It still slows down now and then, I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, the dragged out cynicism of Hollywood Sleaze, the chilledout fuck it of The Situation is Excellent ("Are we living in the end times?/Have a drink and take a rest") and those are nice change-ups, but when this album really hits its full pace, on Tangle or Future Tense or others, there's nothing like it.
Dancepunk does not mean what it could mean, it means all new-wavey stuff, cleaned-up funk-punk, echoes of Gang of Four and what not, art and keyboards and disco shine, which can be cool, can be a good time, but then it leaves me struggling to put words to the physical sensation of Clever Clever. But maybe that's a good thing, shutting off one linguistic alley makes you scramble and search for a new one, a more refined descriptor to pin into the music. Dancepunk, what it could mean are these sort of wriggly Lurkers-lumped punk rock numbers, that shuffle and step quickly and purposefully, that move like you want to move, that pull you out of yourself with every tossed-off riff or bass turn or drum shiver, punk for dancers. Move yourself to this beat, pop like a broken bass-string, find yourself, draw yourself, make yourself, punk melodic and guitar frantic.
On Static Shock records.
The Wait, Just You Wait, the chug and pump of I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, tension infects this album, the songs woundtight and cramped, pushed together and ready to snap, ready to spool out with snaking chaos, degrade and roll over the hill sad and old, like the promises of Just You Wait and Be Old Soon, it's an album aware of what lays ahead, so it crackles and dances with what life it has now.
It still slows down now and then, I'm Still Waiting for the Buzz, the dragged out cynicism of Hollywood Sleaze, the chilledout fuck it of The Situation is Excellent ("Are we living in the end times?/Have a drink and take a rest") and those are nice change-ups, but when this album really hits its full pace, on Tangle or Future Tense or others, there's nothing like it.
Dancepunk does not mean what it could mean, it means all new-wavey stuff, cleaned-up funk-punk, echoes of Gang of Four and what not, art and keyboards and disco shine, which can be cool, can be a good time, but then it leaves me struggling to put words to the physical sensation of Clever Clever. But maybe that's a good thing, shutting off one linguistic alley makes you scramble and search for a new one, a more refined descriptor to pin into the music. Dancepunk, what it could mean are these sort of wriggly Lurkers-lumped punk rock numbers, that shuffle and step quickly and purposefully, that move like you want to move, that pull you out of yourself with every tossed-off riff or bass turn or drum shiver, punk for dancers. Move yourself to this beat, pop like a broken bass-string, find yourself, draw yourself, make yourself, punk melodic and guitar frantic.
On Static Shock records.
Perfect Pussy - I Have Lost All Desire For Feeling
You've got like three seconds of choppy indie guitar on the first song before this thing betrays its true colours, noisy, not crush and burn oppressive noise, but chaotic, shambling noise of collision and inept makings, where distortion pops and gurgles between the melodies, synthlines a little to sharp for comfort, vocals getting swept away in the crash and blare, the songs take flight with stumbles and rips, flinging themselves finally into the air, then crashing down like the gaunt rumblings that end III and IV, the sickly sweet moments that tried to make themselves known giving way to an industrial buzz and clang.
The lyrics carry the weight of trauma and the broken world that cuts and bludgeons and chokes, capable both of the dry depictions of pain and emotion, "she must have been desperate; she acted so lonely. she is deserving of affection, i am glad that she found love." on I, and knife-edge collocations that break through these flatter ruminations and then dart away in the noise, stuffed with power, "there is a sick grace inherent in healing, i had finally choked that down." on III. The way these two tones sit next to each other, struggle with each other, illuminate and colour each other is the key to that power, rooting the poetry in the reality, the trudge, pulling the ugly facts into brighter light with the darker/sweeter/lusher/more symbolically loaded imagery "i'll kiss myself to prove that i'm not afraid of snakes."
Like hallucinatory shifting of Grace Krilanovich's teen/punk/hobo/vampire novel The Orange Eats Creeps, the songs often cycle rapidly through identities and experiences, discarding bits of themselves each time as they struggles for a rock to hold fast to "all things pass through me, i'm a tough boy, wild and innocent and dangerous as hell. i'm awake and awakening. i am here and i have died. i killed the parts of me that said that i know. i killed off all the parts that keep me awake." on II, "first i was softer, then i was stronger, now i am frightened, would you look at me now?" on III.
IV opens with a sort of sticky rockabilly riff before it bursts with anguish and rage, feminist noise thrashings, righteous in the furious punk churn, biting at its own torment. "i'm a real piece of shit, i'm a real lost cause. dare to act like you're surviving and get thrown to the dogs." I'm really terrible about writing about real shit, but this is real shit. Music capable of confronting the worst of the world, the worst of ourselves, the murk and bloodiness, the flesh and the cardinal humours, the personal and the pain of it, in its noise and words, Perfect Pussy captures and confronts, twirls with and twists away from, the violence and the shit, blackened memories. In the way the sheen of the riffs and melodies and vocals are blown apart, tarnished by the reckless noise, you get a sense of how ourselves, our bodies and minds are cracked apart by the awfulness that lives snickering in the unchecked wants and uncaring desires of society and social interaction, but despite the noise, the roar, the melody remains there, in the clatter, battered and struggling not to fall behind, the soaring parts still live, and you feel despite losing the desire to.
The lyrics carry the weight of trauma and the broken world that cuts and bludgeons and chokes, capable both of the dry depictions of pain and emotion, "she must have been desperate; she acted so lonely. she is deserving of affection, i am glad that she found love." on I, and knife-edge collocations that break through these flatter ruminations and then dart away in the noise, stuffed with power, "there is a sick grace inherent in healing, i had finally choked that down." on III. The way these two tones sit next to each other, struggle with each other, illuminate and colour each other is the key to that power, rooting the poetry in the reality, the trudge, pulling the ugly facts into brighter light with the darker/sweeter/lusher/more symbolically loaded imagery "i'll kiss myself to prove that i'm not afraid of snakes."
Like hallucinatory shifting of Grace Krilanovich's teen/punk/hobo/vampire novel The Orange Eats Creeps, the songs often cycle rapidly through identities and experiences, discarding bits of themselves each time as they struggles for a rock to hold fast to "all things pass through me, i'm a tough boy, wild and innocent and dangerous as hell. i'm awake and awakening. i am here and i have died. i killed the parts of me that said that i know. i killed off all the parts that keep me awake." on II, "first i was softer, then i was stronger, now i am frightened, would you look at me now?" on III.
IV opens with a sort of sticky rockabilly riff before it bursts with anguish and rage, feminist noise thrashings, righteous in the furious punk churn, biting at its own torment. "i'm a real piece of shit, i'm a real lost cause. dare to act like you're surviving and get thrown to the dogs." I'm really terrible about writing about real shit, but this is real shit. Music capable of confronting the worst of the world, the worst of ourselves, the murk and bloodiness, the flesh and the cardinal humours, the personal and the pain of it, in its noise and words, Perfect Pussy captures and confronts, twirls with and twists away from, the violence and the shit, blackened memories. In the way the sheen of the riffs and melodies and vocals are blown apart, tarnished by the reckless noise, you get a sense of how ourselves, our bodies and minds are cracked apart by the awfulness that lives snickering in the unchecked wants and uncaring desires of society and social interaction, but despite the noise, the roar, the melody remains there, in the clatter, battered and struggling not to fall behind, the soaring parts still live, and you feel despite losing the desire to.
Friday, 3 January 2014
Cremalleras - s/t
Buzzfast punked-up two-piece thrashpop from Mexico. Curt punk songs that rattle around and hit with the quick crack of a dislocated joint being thwacked back into place. One of the first words I used to describe the band was 'zippy' and upon googling, turns out that Cremalleras is Spanish for 'zippers', much as I would like to take credit for some Joycean multilingual pun, I am not that smart, they just named their band well. From those sharp rising aaaahs on Ex-Novios and the shakearound shuffle of En Todos Lados to the rise and fall rumble of No Me Importa and the burntout caterwaul of Todo Esta Perdido, these songs pop with thin venom, danceable as much as they are aggressive, seducing and shimmying as much as they spit and crash, built from stark snippets of rough punk and sweet bouncy guitar thrum. On Cintas Pepe records.
Zyanose - Why There Grieve?
I am way into into when bands insist on coining their own subgenres to describe their music, that act of marking out your sound as something different something not quite containable is an act of meaningless artistic bravado that always makes me smile, the Taxpayers with goofpunk for example, on Why There Grieve? Zyanose have dubbed their twin-bass fury DITCH CRUST NOISE CORE, at once a descriptor for their sound and a herald of their attack. Zyanose make punishing stuff, deep, burbling, biting noise that crashes with the force of buildings falling.
While their last 12" Insane Noise Raid focused on sin, Why There Grieve? moves slightly outside these classical interior failings to deal with more modern pressures. Keep Yourself is a punx on punx song, namechecking Gloom, Confuse, the forerunners of Zyanose's ugly sound. "I beleave in punk" it screams. Maybe the one thing that Zyanose do believe in, the rest of the album torn through with looming nuclear spectres and smaller quieter forms of oblivion, drudgery of work, the venal machinations of politicians, apathy creeping like frostbite, irritation, anger, all drawn in chaotic blasts, as the noise swirls in panic on Silent or F.O.A.D., rumbles then bursts on Snapped Pappet, clangors in incomprehensible conflict on the Die is Cast (while the liner notes give lyrics in both Japanese and English, the long string of kanji that is The Die Is Cast is translated into English as Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhrrrr!!!!).
Nihilistic squealings. Pulse is a 13 second wordless, well, pulse, that ends off the first side of the record. The sound of a countdown, or a time marker, an underwater bloop, like a baby version of the rest of the records explosions, a short snap of the worldbeat that Zyanose feel down in the corroded bones of the world, that they explicate on in the militaristically underpinned Camouflage or the anguished vocalisations of Options for the Fool.
Before the album runs out to a stop with the drums on Keep Yourself, Zyanose construct an awful world of awful noise, few releases from its pain, just the slightly longer bite and rumble of that final track and its strength in punk, strength in the noise that's ripped out of the earth in order to mirror the noise that's pressed down on you. F.O.A.D. Fuck off and die. Fuck off and dance.
While their last 12" Insane Noise Raid focused on sin, Why There Grieve? moves slightly outside these classical interior failings to deal with more modern pressures. Keep Yourself is a punx on punx song, namechecking Gloom, Confuse, the forerunners of Zyanose's ugly sound. "I beleave in punk" it screams. Maybe the one thing that Zyanose do believe in, the rest of the album torn through with looming nuclear spectres and smaller quieter forms of oblivion, drudgery of work, the venal machinations of politicians, apathy creeping like frostbite, irritation, anger, all drawn in chaotic blasts, as the noise swirls in panic on Silent or F.O.A.D., rumbles then bursts on Snapped Pappet, clangors in incomprehensible conflict on the Die is Cast (while the liner notes give lyrics in both Japanese and English, the long string of kanji that is The Die Is Cast is translated into English as Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhrrrr!!!!).
Nihilistic squealings. Pulse is a 13 second wordless, well, pulse, that ends off the first side of the record. The sound of a countdown, or a time marker, an underwater bloop, like a baby version of the rest of the records explosions, a short snap of the worldbeat that Zyanose feel down in the corroded bones of the world, that they explicate on in the militaristically underpinned Camouflage or the anguished vocalisations of Options for the Fool.
Before the album runs out to a stop with the drums on Keep Yourself, Zyanose construct an awful world of awful noise, few releases from its pain, just the slightly longer bite and rumble of that final track and its strength in punk, strength in the noise that's ripped out of the earth in order to mirror the noise that's pressed down on you. F.O.A.D. Fuck off and die. Fuck off and dance.
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