The Gluts - Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip
Fuzz Club
Released: 12th April 2019
It is two years since The Gluts stunned us with their mightily impressive Estasi album and if that record was chock-full of steaming guitars and huge basslines, then Dengue Fever Hypnotic Trip bursts at the seams and spills them all over the floor. Inspired by the dengue fever and malaria bassist Claudia Cesana picked up at the same time during a recent trip to Africa, this album is particularly hard-hitting, dense and foggy. "It’s like a fuzz that punches you square in your face in an overloaded hypnotic way, and we wanted to show that in the music," she commented. This collection will certainly slap you around brutally before leaving you supine; it's heavier than really heavy and so much so that at times it appears to buckle under its own weight. It ain't going nowhere. There is less of an alternative sensibility to DFHT than the band have shown before; the sound is more retro, more rooted in the denser world of psychedelic rock, and what is lost in innovation is made up for in sheer power. There are some nice woozy moments, especially in the slow-paced 'Dalal's Song' which builds ever so slowly, adding enticing layers of guitar before wah-wahing out and retiring gracefully without ever changing pace. 'De Witte Jager' opens like the Sisters of Mercy on mogadon, but the remainder of the record is pretty much full-on heavy attack, with touches of Loop and even The Stooges buried under a colossal noise and some lovely stretching guitars. Opener 'E. The Real Punk Rocker' sets the scene rather well, charging along in a rather traditional way, but saved by a good, throaty vocal and a six-string storm. 'Swamp' strangely has a minute of silence at the end of it, 'Leviathan' is just that, and closer 'J. Will Fuck You Now' is another rock and roller charging through a welter of noise. There's nothing new or startling about this record, but it's a weighty beast and noisy enough to make it intensely enjoyable. Well worth getting infected.
Insides - Euphoria
Beacon Sound
Released: 22nd April 2019
We were always a little annoyed at Insides in the early 1990s as Earwig had been a favourite band of ours and the formation of this new duo by Kirsty Yates (vocals and bass) and Julian Tardo (guitar, piano and programming), meant they had come to a premature end. We didn't ignore Insides' recordings because of this but probaby didn't give them the attention they deserved and so this 1993 release on 4AD offshoot Guernica sat rather neglected on our shelves. It has now been remastered from the original half-inch tapes and released in a limited vinyl edition by Beacon Sound and this gives us an opportunity to right a few wrongs. For Euphoria is not a record to be ignored. Released in the era when soundscaping was de rigueur, a group of forward-thinking bands began to texturise their guitar patterns with samplers and sequencers to produce a fresh sound that soon became labelled as 'post-rock' but which actually reflected many facets of so-called rock and roll. This band's music had a delicacy and a lightness of touch to it that made it more akin to ambient pop, though the subject matter of the lyrics was so real and rooted in the fragility of the human body and mind that it touched upon a universal ambience: the insides of us all. With its programmed rhythms neglecting to drive this music in a straight line, these songs fail to travel from A to B, but remain rooted around A and a half, the repetition in the sound mirroring the inability of the words to move outside of a deeply personal world of intimate connections and ultimate conflictions. Yates narrates rather than sings and talks in sentences rather than verse. "Should I be seized by the urge to reproduce before I'm thirty? And how long before I'm dead below the waist?" The whole is deeply touching, refreshingly experimental and ultimately doomed. Bands such as Insides were wiped away by the regression of Britpop which drove underground music back into the mainstream and stripped away its mystery and soul. Count Euphoria as one of the last treasures of a doomed world.
Kristin Hersh - Crooked
Fire
Released: 22nd April 2019
Nine years after Kristin Hersh released her eighth studio album, Fire Records finally made Crooked available on a physical format on Record Store Day, in a limited edition run in orange vinyl. The original had appeared only as a download with a book, which was an interesting concept, the book being a thing of no little beauty. If it had come with a CD, as did Wyatt at the Coyote Palace some six years later, then it would have been just about perfect. The reissue is timely as this is a collection demanding further investigation as it really marks a step up in Hersh's solo output, where the songs are more fleshed out and rounded, giving the whole a weightier feel than the previous acoustic outings which could sometimes appear as gatherings of frail orphans. It is impressive Hersh here plays every instrument and produces the record herself as it sounds very much like a well-rehearsed band in harmony and the arrangements are sometimes quite brilliant, as on the beautifully-worked 'Coals' which swings from harmonious sing-along to edgy electric nervousness. Every track here is finely woven and atmospheric. The title track 'Crooked' is disturbing and shaky and there is a nice alternative edge to the whole collection where everything is controlled but nothing quite behaves as it should. 'Rubidoux' melts, 'Krait' leaks at the seams, 'Mississippi Kite' spins, and 'Moan' has contracted a wasting blues disease. It's all good, and Hersh's unmatchable voice is gravelly and questioning throughout. If you missed it the first time around grab a copy while you can; this is impressive work from one of the truly great artists of the past thirty years.
James Clarke Five - Parlour Sounds
The Beautiful Music
Released: 30th April 2019
It really has been a struggle to reopen our hearts to the milder end of the indie spectrum, and that is from folk who were buying all of the Sarah releases from the day they started, let alone ones who were huge fans of Subway and the fanzine scene that revolved around bands from a similar orbit. We know why this is. It is because we were fighting for our lives when the whole indie scene in which we had dwelled in happy oblivion for a couple of decades was wiped out around the turn of the millennium and we were lost. In fear for our identity we took it upon ourselves to champion those acts who would boldly declare for the alternative and look to rebuild everything we cherished out of the rubble of despair. Of course, while a host of new post-punk bands were screaming defiance at any doubters, there were many whose hearts never drifted far from the indie-pop ethic, and Canada's The Beautiful Music stand tall among them. The latest offering from the label is a fascinating record by James Hughes, one time keyboardist and vocalist for legendary Liverpool act, The Cherry Boys, who is now recording as the James Clarke Five. Parlour Sounds is as retro as you like: gentle, melodic and so reminiscent of a host of records from the sixties that they can't help flying into your mind as you are listening. 'The Redemption of Casper Green' could have been lifted directly from the Kinks' Village Green, and even its name is a perfect fit. It's no bad thing; that album stood in isolation from the prevalent drug-fuelled, hippy-psych of 1968 just as Parlour Sounds stands a mile apart from most of the records being released in 2019. It's a clean record, almost pure in its ethics, and at times it is quite breathtakingly attractive. Closing track 'Just A Smile' is tapped from the fountain of everlasting joy; it's a real melodic beauty and a couple of plays will leave you hopelessly hooked. It is by no means the only song here that will warm your heart, so grab a bottle of wine, lie down by a river and drift away to these tunes. You won't even need the sunshine; there is enough in this record to last the whole year.
Greys - Age Hasn't Spoiled You
Carpark
Released: 10th May 2019
It's great to see bands progressing and reaching their potential. Toronto's Greys began life as a rather noisy punk band, but one with obvious talent and an ear for doing something different. 2015's Repulsion EP gave a glimpse of what the band could achieve before a double album release the following year saw the band begin to experiment more with pace and texture, adding new dimensions to their sound. Apparently in the hope of becoming whatever a rock band isn't, Greys take this progression to a whole new level on Age Hasn't Spoiled You, an impressive album of exploration, melody and controlled aggression. It's all a stab in the dark according to frontman Shehzaad Jiwani who witnessed the creative community in his city fall apart leaving the band uncertain of what the future held. In this vacuum Greys decided to create their own future, breaking down the components of their music to reflect the overriding "sense of instability". In doing so they have created here a fascinating record that sounds remarkably fresh and distinctly fulfilling. It's all about control. There's huge power in 'Arc Light' with massive drums pounding behind tough, warping guitars and a vocal that manages to maintain its cool despite the extreme provocation. It refuses to explode in desperation or despair and it is this restraint that gives this collection such force. Discipline is evident throughout. 'Constant Pose' is gently mutated into a beautiful piece of frustrated psychedelia, 'Kill Appeal' is nicely tucked in despite Braeden Craig's rapid fire drumming and a mad sax break, while 'Western Guilt' is a lovely harmonic ballad, gorgeously soundscaped and dreamy. All these songs are beautifully pieced together; studio craft abounds. No longer limiting themselves to record live, the band have found they can make bolder statements by becoming less visceral and less openly exposed. There's not a song amongst the eleven that will pass you by without leaving its mark and asking a few questions and that is quite an achievement. Really impressive.
Institute - Readjusting The Locks
Sacred Bones
Released: 17th May 2019
This is the third album now from our favourite American punk band and Institute have rung in the changes, half the band moving from Austin, Texas, to New York, which makes this record truly trans-continental. With singer Moses Brown and guitarist Arak Avakian now living in the north-east, the pair flew to Houston in October 2018 to rehearse the entirety of the album in a single day, before drummer Barry Elkanick and bassist Adam Cahoon travelled up to Brooklyn in December to record the album with the band's long-time producer Ben Greeberg. Soundwise, Readjusting The Locks shows an equally marked change, rejecting the wonderful experiments in sound and construction that lit up the first two albums to adopt a more straightforward charging punk approach. These songs have a retro air to them, fast and dirty, and it is an approach deliberately adopted as a direct response to the horrors so obviously facing the world. Brown has turned his eyes away from the internal self-loathing that shaped his early lyrics to lambast the irresponsible notions of utopia fostered on the world by neoliberalism which in its irresponsibilty has created a disastrous political vacuum. "We do not possess the ability to create a truly just and sustainable utopia on this earth. Humanity will perpetually be READJUSTING THE LOCKS of our existential crisis ... We’re living in a world of dangerously quick solutions justified under the narrative of progress. This is irresponsible and unhumanitarian, it construes the world into black and white agendas and out of reality, marginalizing many in the process. This is a world that doesn’t take calculated actions or react to the needs of its people. We will continue sweeping the wellbeing of humanity under the rug in the name of advancing ourselves."
Musically, the album is nowhere near as gripping as the first two albums, but Avakian has more than enough talent to lift the songs above the average punk rant, and Brown's vocals are a perfect frame for the protests, the singer appearing to cherish the individuality that has previously caused him so much internal pain, "I don't want to buy my well being. Only I know what I need." It will be interesting to see what road Institute take from here, but if the world needs a punch in the face right now, this is a pretty impressive one.
Esya - Absurdity of ATCG (I)
Esya Music
Released: 24th May 2019
Things have been pretty quiet for some time on the Savages front and our favourite bassist Ayse Hassan has taken the opportunity to put out some duo and solo records under the names of 180db and Esya. This is the second release in a series of three from Esya, limited to 300 copies on twelve-inch vinyl with the promise that there will be no reprints in this design or format. (Possibly meaning the whole set will be released as an album in the future.) Hassan describes these recordings as "an unsettling, beat driven and wonky exploration of alternate personas. Transgressing comfort zones by experimenting with the complex and contradictory ideas that can exist within one person." This ties in well with the lyrics, "Everything and nothing are all you meant to me," which are the main focus of the bleak eight and a half minute opener, 'Everything', which wraps the words with droning synths and madly rattling drum machine patterns. 'Nothing' is more controlled, anchored by a weighty bass line and decorated with nicely emotive guitars. Hassan's vocals are cool and distant in true post-punk style and the whole works really well, stopping dead after seven and half minutes when everything that needed to be said has been said. The final three tracks are much shorter. 'Atmosphere' could be a Banshees' b-side (check them out), 'Machine Dance' blips away for ninety-one seconds, and closer 'Wild Nights' wraps the whole things up well, being mildly disturbing and woozy and possibly the morning after the machines had spent the night dancing. It's a fascinating record; there is a dramatic sense of isolation in these recordings as Hassan attempts to pick out some semblence of order from her innermost being, and quite probably fails. She is stripping down her humanity to its basic parts (ATCG are nucleobases, part of the building blocks of DNA) to see if that offers any answers. We are guessing the investigation continues.
Juju - Maps And Territory
Fuzz Club
Released: 31st May 2019
You will find a lot of blistering, psychedelic rock on London's Fuzz Club with a sprinkling of terminal drone thrown in for good luck, but label-favourites Juju intriguingly offer up something completely different. The brainchild of Sicilian multi-instrumentalist Gioele Valenti, Juju have redefined
a few boundaries over the past few years with their rhythmic, almost choral, hymns which carry many of the trademarks of traditional psych rock, but use them as mere adornments to something altogether more approachable and melodic. This is the third album from the group and it features a collaboration with Goatman from the mysterious Swedish collective, Goat, as well as the avant-garde American jazz musician, Amy Denio. The former, 'I'm In A Trance', features the African drumming that Goatman used to good effect on 2018's Rhythms album, but here it is submerged in the heavy, dreamy atmosphere that embraces this whole collection. There are some nice ascending guitars and a prog solo which almost breaks the mood, but not quite. Denio plays baritone sax on the closing track, 'Archontes Take Control', a ten-minute epic which is as good a musical definition of 'drowsy' as you will ever hear. This is very much music with a mood; not quite a trance, but not many steps removed from that. There is the musical repetition that helps to build the dream state and the abandonment of extremes that would only shake the torpor, but this does not mean there is little going on in this trimmed environment. 'Motherfucker Core' is particuarly splendid, with scratchy guitars cutting away in the background as the vocals and instrumentation dance around the absolutely rigid rhythm track, while 'If You Will Fall' stretches and probes, again without ever missing a step. Just six songs here in forty-one minutes, though even coming in at just under seven minutes each, nothing seems over-long, nothing seems out of place, and nothing will makes you want to escape from the fascinating world that Juju build around you. A world folded in on itself.
Ice Baths - Decadent Sprinter
Blank Editions
Released: 31st May 2019
London's Ice Baths are the latest in a pleasingly long-line of post-punk explorers to impress us, and they now follow their eponymous debut album from last year with a six-track, twelve-inch EP released in a run of 300 by Blank Editions. Delivered in a neat package with a hand-cut sleeve and white vinyl record, there's still a few to be nabbed from indie record stores so it is worth securing one while you still can. The band have described this record as a bridge between their first and second albums, and it is more angular than their debut, running at a faster pace, and losing some of the industrial weight which is replaced by a more cutting sound, like a cross between Magazine and Viet Cong. The band name TV Personalities and Devo amongst their influences, but if they share any of their sensibilities, it is mainly that of being on the outside looking in. They certainly don't adopt an easy approach to their work, recording in analogue to capture the exact sounds they require, and it is clear everything here is laid out to a strict plan and to exacting standards. There are two musical interludes separating the four songs, the parentheses almost relegating them in importance. '(empathy waiting)' is forty-two seconds of a building keyboard drone and '(desperate disappointment)' is just over two minutes of the same, yet slightly stuttering. The first piece links opener 'Auster' with 'Marlowe', the former trotting along at an urgent pace with nicely doubled vocals that slightly disagree with themselves, while the latter has more room to breathe, the impressively enunciated vocals failing to be caught up in the melee of the charging bass and ever more urgent punk guitars. The second musical piece divides these tracks from 'Clusters' and 'Simulation' which both sparkle in the gloom, the closer being marginally off-centre which gives it a pleasingly disturbing edge. It's impressive stuff from another band worth keeping an eye on. We're starting to feel spoiled.
Girl Band - Shoulderblades
Rough Trade
Released: 7th June 2019
There's no doubt that a handful of years ago, Dublin's Girl Band were the best new band on the planet and it is a testament to the golden era we are currently experiencing that they are now being challenged for that title from all sides. It's some three years since the band released their last single and nearly four since the astonishing debut album Holding Hands With Jamie blew our minds back in September 2015. The band have had their problems in the intervening years; as with all of us life gets in the way sometimes, but the good news is that a new album, The Talkies, is set for release in September and the band have put out 'Shoulderblades' as a taster for the new set. It was great to see that interest in the group has not faded during their absence and the ridiculously small quantity of 750 copies of the new single sold out in the blink of an eye, prompting the band to up the number to 1,100. Perhaps the upsurge of interest in alternative music slipped by them unnoticed, but it may be time they acknowledged they are now bigger and more important than they ever thought. The one-sided twelve-inch with a custom etched b-side by artist Damien Tran continues the band's run of producing bespoke packaging for the their records, but the most important part is always the music, and once again Girl Band deliver big time. 'Shoulderblades' is just over six minutes of grinding, pounding and occasionally soaring instrumentation with some bastard jazz thrown into the mix. There's scores of divergent ideas here, all prevented from running around headless by Dara Kiely’s dominant vocal which manages to gather up every strand and hold it firmly in place. It's fucking great. If you miss out on getting a copy of this single, don't miss out on the album. They're still the best.
Membranes - What Nature Gives Nature Takes Away
Cherry Red
Released: 7th June 2019
We've been sitting here with this one for ages just wondering what the bloody hell we can say about it. First, the deluxe vinyl edition came with a pop-up bat cover which made us ludicrously happy and gave hours of enjoyment. When we eventually got round to playing the record, it rather left us speechless. Who would have thought in the early eighties that The Membranes of all people would still be around nearly forty years later making records as ludicrously challenging, ambitious and impressive as What Nature Gives ...? We thought the evolution from detonating punk chaos to 2015's astonishing Dark Matter/Dark Energy was astounding enough, but the band have moved on from discussing life, death and the construction of the universe to yet another minor topic: the lubricious yet dispassionate ways of Mother Nature. And all in a mini opera that sounds like the soundtrack to a West End musical production of The Omen. The band have been working with the BIMM choir for some time now and their contribution to this double album is considerable and lends an almost gothic edge to what is really sixteen prog-punk tunes. It's so difficult to pick highlights here as there is so much going on it is impossible to keep a grip on everything. Suffice it to say that when Pete Byrchmore and Nick Brown's guitars are given free rein it is invariably uplifting, that Rob Haynes's drumming really is immaculate and that on occasion John Robb's basslines are big enough to have their own gravitational pull. At a push 'Black Is The Colour' steals the show with the choir going all B52s in a song that launches into orbit and collects a few aliens on the way. Running it close is 'The Magical and Mystical Properties Of Flowers', a shape-shifter of a song with a seemingly fluid exoskeleton that changes its form at will. The jagged 'Snow Monkey' is also up there with some quite lovely guitar work hiding at the back and occasionally at the front. All of these songs feature so many nice little touches it is difficult to keep count so don't even bother trying. This is a record that will leave you scratching your head and wondering just what the hell is going on, and that is a very fine thing. Not to be dipped into, but played as a whole. Revel in your confusion.
Is Bliss - Strange Communication
Club AC30
Released: 7th June 2019
Accomplished is not always an insult, even amongst alternative purists, and Portsmouth trio Is Bliss certainly show signs of rampant capability on their debut album. The band, who have come to prominence in recent times by opening for legendary outfits such as The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Telescopes, have produced a fine crossover album here, one that touches hands with shoegaze, psych and prog to create a sound that is edgy enough to please those with more esoteric tastes as well as refined enough to attract those with a more detailed ear for melody. Led by punchy drums and a sensitive shoegaze guitar line, seven minute opener 'Belong' sets out its stall early doors as bruising guitars and stretched vocals cut across its dreamlike haze before submitting to prog exploration and a fair bit of widdling. It's a nice opening from a band with a clear handle on where they are coming from. At times they sound like middle period Catherine Wheel, with refined, looping guitars lighting up 'Can't Sleep Forever' though there are also hints of Loop in the raw repetition that inhabits 'What To Believe'. Hell, they even hint at The Beatles in their most traditional psych moment here, 'Wonder', full of wandering, eastern guitars and distorted vocals. A pleasing blend of influence and approach, Strange Communication is weighty and fulfilling, and not far removed from being remarkable. Indeed, drop the deathly 'slow song', 'I Tried', which adds nothing to the mix, and replace it with something more experimental and thrilling and they may well have been there. Investigate.
Crystal Soda Cream - Things Don't Talk
Wilhelm Show Me The Major Label
Released: 25th June 2019
The latest offering from our favourite Austrian goths is a mini album, featuring eight tracks and running to some twenty-four minutes. With none of the songs reaching four minutes and half of them failing to make it to three, this is short and snappy for Crystal Soda Cream and the brevity certainly helps with the focus of the music. These are atmospheric, dark snapshots of the Vienna underground (if not the darker recesses of the mind), housed in a suitably doomy, monochrome sleeve, and all sitting firmly in the territory of the 1980s' goth sound that we, quite frankly, still adore. As we have heard before, there's more than a touch of The Cure's influence in this music, though foggy keyboards contribute as much to the overlying mood as pointed guitars. There are certainly some nice guitar contributions from Philipp Forthuber as witnessed on the sparkling 'A Drill', the lively, probing 'Die Mauer' and the stuttering 'To Your Arms'. And again, there is a marked progression in refining the band's sound with a continuing smoothing away of the more abrasive, punkier spurs heard in their early records; the vocals are more rounded, yet their focus remains as sharp as ever. The record is split between German language songs and English language ones, though this matters little as you are enticed to embrace the dark side. The only physical version of this record is a cassette, available from the label here.
