Posts Tagged ‘EP Review’

Pythies – Disillusion

Posted: 15 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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20th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

2024 is the year of Pythies, the musical project of Parisienne grunge fan Lise.L. While the Internet age has enabled countless acts to leap from bedroom conception to releases in a matter of weeks, she’s been rather more measured in her approach, and having decided at the end of 2022 ‘to form a new musical project lead only by women, which included influences of the grunge culture of the 90s (L7, 7 Year Bitch, Babes in Toyland, Hole) and her taste for witchcraft’, debuting with an EP in May 2023, 2024 has seen the emergence of a couple of singles ahead of this EP release.

I will admit that I’m still coming to terms with this new model. In the 80s, 90s, and even 00s, you would either release a single or an EP. But digital has changed everything. Historically, whether it was a single or an EP, there would be physical formats, and a single or EP would both receive a release on 7” or 12” and a CD. Now, making a track available on Bandcamp ahead of the full EP’s release counts as a ‘single’, as does putting out a video for a song on YouTube.

Disillusion lands firmly on a personal level, then, because it’s hard not to feel disillusioned with the state of the industry, and, often, the state of music, period, and this EP’s five tracks articulate the sentiment with precision. But… acts like Pythies do bring hope, not to mention a real alternative to the mediocre, mass-produced, autotuned slop which dominates not only the charts but mainstream culture as a while.

There’s something wonderfully raw and exciting about this EP, blasting off with ‘Blondinette’, fast-fingered bassline that boasts some nifty runs racing hither and thither beneath a driving, gritty guitar, which does nothing fancy, but crunches hard, propelled by some energetic drumming and a fuckload of attitude.

The punning ‘I Pithie You’ is gentler and more melodic in the verses, but exploits the classic grunge quiet / loud dynamic with a ripping chorus. And did I mention attitude? Yeah, I know, but it needs emphasising: Pythies distils a blend of anger and nonchalance, while sonically they encapsulate the spirit of ’78 as much as ’92, and the title track positively roars.

Closing off with goth-punk tinged single cut ‘Toy’, Disillusion leaves you feeling exhilarated, excited: there’s nothing better than hearing a band channelling all the frustration, all the rage, all the angst into tight bursts of guitar-driven energy, and Pythies do it so, so well.

AA

Pythies cover EP crédits Orane Auvray

PIG – Feast of Agony

Posted: 14 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Hot on the sweaty trotters of Red Room, released in May, the Lord of Lard, Raymond Watts has managed to mine fresh truffles for a whole new EP ahead of embarking on an extensive tour of the US, which so happens to take its name from the first track on said EP, ‘Heroin for the Damned’. The fact that this isn’t a set of remixes

The title alone is glorious, and you can almost feel the relish with which Watts conjured up the phrase, wicked, perverse, dark, and equally ostentatious and grand, evoking an image within the realms of The Last Supper but with an S&M slant as the participants dine on an orgy of gore… or something. When it comes to relishing the richness of language and delighting in deliciously devilish wordplay and alliteration, sifting through PIG’s catalogue for titles and lyrics (there’s a suitably extravagant book containing all of them just out) provides abundant evidence that Watts really gets kicks from it.

It’s also clear he is absolutely loving the whole self-styled industrial rock-god posturing, hamming it up in leather and mesh, and simply the whole music-making thing, perhaps more than at any point in his career. Instead of being awkward about self-promotion, he’s fully embracing its absurdity, and in a genre that’s largely dominated by serious, angry people, PIG stand out as being rather less po-faced, and altogether more fun than your average industrial act. I’m not sure I’ve seen Al Jourgensen or Trent Reznor posting pics on Facebook hugging their pooches.

That doesn’t mean that the music is any less serious. Watts and his various collaborators really know how to bring a crunching riff and a stonking beat, and, occasionally, having taken early cues from the legendary JG Thirlwell, spin in some bombastic strings and grand orchestral strikes. And Feast of Agony is dark, heavy, intense, and marks a strong return to the more experimental 90s work following a pursuit of an altogether glammier sound of late.

‘Heroin for the Damned’ – the opium of the people for the 21st Century, perhaps – starts low, slow, and sinister, Watts’ vocal a croak amidst a dank electronic swamp before a steady riff, laden with grit, grinds in, rubbing hard against a lowdown pulsating synth groove. It’s a bit NIN circa The Downward Spiral, but equally it’s quintessentially 90s PIG, and lands a monster chorus that combines the raging roar of Sinsation and the grainy grooves of Praise the Lard with gushing gospel grandeur – something that really dominates the final track, the Jim Davies remix of ‘Baptise, Bless, Bleed.’ Piano and bold orchestral sweeps meld with stark synths and crunching guitars on ‘Fallout’, before Watts comes on like Bowie on the slow-paced anthemic ‘Comedown’, while the verses of ‘Hand of Mercy’ owe more to Prince.

It’s a PIG release and therefore it’s a pure [serial killer] thriller, alright – but even within the now-expansive catalogue, Feast of Agony is a strong entry.

AA

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Don’t Try – The Bible Study Group Massacre

Posted: 31 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Buzzhowl Records – 27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Once again, following the release of a four-way split showcasing local talent a few months ago, Stoke proves the be the spawning ground of more off-kilter noisy noise, this time from no-wave duo Don’t Try with their second EP. As an additional point of note, and also something of a recommendation / hype point, the EP’s artwork is courtesy of Dan Holloway, of USA Nails/Eurosuite/Dead Arms fame, who worked with the band previously on their 2018 single ‘JWAFJ’. To accompany the release, Dan has also realised a video in his own inimitable style.

Like ‘JWAFJ’, their first EP, Elvis Is Dead was released in 2018, meaning it’s been a full six years since they last released anything, suggesting that on the output stakes at least, they’ve been living up to the band’s name.

Lead track ‘my grazed knee’ with its gritty yet poppy synths and urgent, determined beats isn’t actually a million miles from the sound of The Eurosuite. It reminds us of the proximity of new wave to punk, and the reasons why new wave and post-punk are essentially interchangeable terms. And while punk did, undoubtedly, spawn some great tunes (I’d perhaps contend less great bands, in that many punk acts, with a few notable exceptions like The Ruts and Adverts, produced only one or two outstanding or even memorable sings, and were unable to deliver the entirety of a solid album, let alone a career), it was post-punk where things got interesting, after things had evolved from three-chord stomps. If punk was predominantly pissed-off, railing against boredom and just off the rails, what followed explored a greater emotional range, and was more articulate, both musically and lyrically. For all its rebellion and antagonism toward conventions and norms, punk very quickly established its own conventions and norms: post-punk broke down those definitions to explore in myriad different directions, fragmenting and evolving into countless new genres.

It’s been a long time since the advent of both punk and new wave now, and in theory, any contemporary exponent of either is liable to tie themselves to certain tropes. But contemporary punk bands, more often than not, seem to be so limited in their scope, whereas many current acts who align themselves with post punk / new wave offer a broader range – even the ones who have been lazily lumped into the bracket of Joy Division imitators. I mention this as I discovered both Interpol and Editors because they were constantly being compared to Joy Division, and while I came to like both bands very much, my first reaction was dismay laced with disappointment over how unlike Joy Division either act sounded.

And so, circuitously, we arrive back with Don’t Try. ‘my grazed knee,’ as I was starting to say before I embarked on my obligatory and epic detour, is a fuzzy, low-fi keyboard-driven cut that boasts a monstrous throbber of a grindy synth bass groove that lands between Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Nag Nag Nag.’ But it’s a lot harder, harsher, noiser, more aggressive, more antagonised. Punkier? I suppose it’s representative of the point at which that nascent industrial sound began to evolve, but there’s also a manic hardcore edge to it, which is more apparent on the harsh assault of ‘climax in the imax’. Here, everything is ratcheted up in its volume and intensity, there’s a clattering metallic snare sound that crashes like a bin lid through the song’s duration, and about two-thirds in, it sounds like someone’s started up a drill and it all suddenly goes slower and heavier and you start to feel like things are getting dark and tense. This is very much a positive, in case you’re wondering.

There’s a clear trajectory to this EP, a sonic evolution which moved forward with each track, and things turn full-on industrial on the third track, ‘ritual’, which manifests are a monstrous, relentless rhythmic pounding reminiscent of mid-80s SWANS and the heavy grind of Godflesh. The crazed, anguished vocals are howled, yelped, drawled, hinting at the manic howl of the Jesus Lizard (and so, equally, Blacklisters). After hitting what feels like a locked groove around the mid-point, everything explodes and the track – and EP – climaxes in a slamming wall of ear-blasting noise. None of it’s pretty. All of it’s good.

AA

AA

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Morgue Terror – Violent and Murderous Thoughts

Posted: 21 August 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Self-released – 23rd August 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Violent and Murderous Thoughts is the second EP from ‘Horror-themed death metal act Morgue Terror’, and this one is all about ‘chronicling the atrocities of four sadistic serial killers and a debauched, abusive sect’ across its five tracks. In this sense, it broadly represents a thematic continuation of its predecessor, their eponymous debut, which was ‘all about the murders and characters in the Terrifier movies’. Nerds. However, it also marks something of a departure, being their first release ‘to have an actual drummer, with Dustin Klimek (ex-Full of Hell) behind the kit’.

His presence has certainly brought a new dynamic to the sound, with (full of) hell-for-leather pedalwork bringing relentlessly powerful beats to propel the furious fret frenzy and guttural grunting vocals. I mean, it’s impossible to determine by ear who any of the sadistic serial killers might be, and serial killers really have been done to death – if you’ll pardon the pun – and have, thanks to Channel 5 and Netflix, become completely mainstream. Still, in terms of revelling in gore and death metal tropes, Morgue Terror deliver everything they promise, and this EP sounds exactly the way you’d expect it to based on the bloody, gruesome cover art. Sure, it’s puerile and way over the top – the cover and the music – but it works.

‘Chessmaster’ (inspired by Claude Bloodgood, perhaps?) showcases some well-conceived dynamics, with tempo changes and breakdowns aplenty and some interesting chord progressions, packing a lot of action into only a little more than three minutes. ‘Bludgeoned_Brutalized’, the longest of the songs and running past four minutes conveys the sentiment of the title as an aural manifestation, relentlessly battering the listener with punishing force. The vocals sound as if they’re being coughed through a cascade of blood while the guy’s entrails are being torn out through his abdomen. Make no mistake, this is nasty, and single cut ‘Neanderthal’, which features guest vocalist Cheney Crabb is punishing from beginning to end, three devastating minutes of raw intensity.

There is simply no let-up across the duration of Violent and Murderous Thoughts, and while the whole EP may only have a duration of around eighteen minutes, it’s a blunt forced trauma in musical form: hard-hitting and harrowing, it leaves you feeling battered, bruised and borderline concussed.

AA

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Hearse Pileup – Realise

Posted: 15 July 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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2nd July 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Unless I’m looking in all the wrong places, one genre you don’t seem to find many emerging acts coming through in is hardcore punk. Reissues of vintage bands – even minor cult acts who were criminally overlooked in their time – are coming (back) to light with releases on Southern Lord and the like, but new true hardcore punk acts are few and far between, with many presenting a more metal

This is raw, fast, gritty, and angry. And political. ‘Realise’ is a fist-pumping roar of rage, positively foaming at the mouth with the fury of betrayal. Told from the position of the punter for whom the penny’s dropping that they’ve been lied to and done over, ‘Realise’ rails against the system and the way in which politics serves politicians rather than the people. As they put it, ‘Writing with the credo “Shit’s fucked – call it out”, the song highlights that politics doesn’t, and cannot, happen only once every five years. Obviously, these guys get it, but it still shocks me that there’s such a thing as working-class Tories. They seem to proliferate in run-down rural areas, places like Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Many of these regions are agricultural, and the (ageing) populations have bought the myth that the migrant workers picking and sorting veg for minimum wage – the same migrant workers who serve them their coffees and also service their health in evermore dilapidated hospitals – are stealing their jobs. Those would be the jobs they’re retired from, and would never have done on account of the pay and conditions being poor. But this is the way of capitalism – blaming the most vulnerable for your own plight while aspiring to higher things and buying into the idea of trickle-down economics is simply pissing on the head of the person on the next rung down because the person on the rung above is pissing on you, and because they’re on the higher rung, it must be right. It is, of course, a complete con. Shit is, indeed, fucked.

The bass-rattling blast of ‘Grindstone,’ which first surfaced a few years ago, finally makes it to an EP, and it perfectly summarises the wearying, dulling, life-robbing effects of drudge labour and the living hell of working all hours and multiple shit jobs to make ends not even meet. ‘I got my nose to the grindstone every day / I’m grinding so hard I grind my face away / I leave blood on the floor wherever I go / If I grind much more I’ll be grinding bone’ paints a visceral picture and take the notion of working one’s finger to the bone to its logical conclusion. This is precisely what proponents of capitalism and governments who support it want. A people too busy killing themselves with work just to stay alive hasn’t the time or the energy to protest, to uprise, to vote. Notably, the main parties all spoke of rewards for ‘hard-working families’, reinforcing the idea that both families and hard work are both normal and desirable goals. This is clearly false: not everyone is suited to family life, and rewards should not be based on one’s level of conformity, and a question I have asked elsewhere is why should work be hard? It should be enough to simply work, to earn a day’s pay, and still have the energy – physical and mental – to have a life outside it. Promoting the idea that hard work is something we should want to spend our lives on is simply another means of oppression. And yes, making art is work: art and culture are essential, and the existence of cave paintings is testament to the fact that the need for art is in our DNA. So fuck the pitch that work has to be long hours grinding out shit earning a pittance to fund the CEO’s multi-million pound package as if it’s somehow noble. It’s not: it’s exploitation, pure and simple.

This brings us to the final cut, ‘We’re All Going to Hell’, is a full-throttle rabble rouser with a strong chorus. It’s simple, direct, unpretentious. Much as I admire poeticism in songwriting, every form has its time and place, and Hearse Pileup are agitators, looking to shake people awake. You might think their fanbase would be young and left-leaning, but so many who have grown up under the last government are prematurely world-weary, dead on their feet, and apathetic to the whole circus. These are the people Hearse Pileup are reaching out to. And for this purpose, they don’t need to be subtle, but instead deliver a sonic slap round the chops. And with this EP, that’s precisely what they deliver.

AA

AA

Hearse Pileup Artwork

Kojoohar & Frank Ursus – Frost Drought

Posted: 15 March 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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ant-zen – 12th February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

First – the format! So much is being made of the vinyl renaissance right now, and much as I love vinyl, it’s hard to be entirely comfortable with this comeback, in this form. Back in the 90s, when CDs were in the ascendence, I often bought vinyl because it was cheaper: I could pick up an LP for £7.50 when a new-release CD was £11. I still have the receipts in my vinyl copies of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me and Pandemonium by Killing Joke, among other treasures. Now, vinyl is a luxury item. Even a standard LP is around £25, and many are pressed on two pieces of heavyweight vinyl and cost closer to £40, or more if released on Record Store Day. This isn’t right. It’s not honouring the format, it’s another example of exploitation.

But this is rather different, and altogether cooler on so many levels: ant-zen have brought us this release by Kojoohar & Frank Ursus in the form of a 7” EP, with two tracks on each side. You can’t blame them for the price tag given production costs, but the unique hand-printed inlays, etc., at least make each copy unique and make this release a million miles removed from the capitalist conveyor belt.

The thing that matters here is that this release is completely suited to this retro format: a 10” or LP release would have been extravagant, indulgent, and frankly, ill-keeping.

It’s worth quoting the liner note for the back-story here, too: ‘The spark that ignited this collaboration came from a conversation between KOJOOHAR and FRANK URSUS – aka Te/DIS – about the kojoohar album that has just been released at the time and about angst pop and its position in the music scene. talking about new tracks kojoohar was working on, the decision was made to start a collaboration.’

And so we’re presented with Frost Drought, which they describe as ‘a 4-track ep that offers edgy angst pop with analog, gripping synthesizer sounds, metallic rhythms and enigmatic melodies, complementing by frank ursus’ vocals… music and lyrics of FROST DROUGHT describe a world of isolation, mistrust, alienation and the individual’s distance from itself. left alone in the dark…’

Entering the ‘debris field’, we’re presented with dark synths, groaning, whining, whistling, and a slow-tempo-echo-heavy beat. If the baritone vocal is distinctly from the gothier end of post-punk, the instrumentation is equal parts post-punk and ultra-stark, bleak hip-hop. ‘never compromise’ pushes into stark, dark, electro territory, in the realm of mid-80s Depeche Mode. Ursus’ vocals are commanding, but so dark, and the music is so claustrophobic as to be suffocating. ‘never compromise’ sounds like a manifesto, and whipping snares sounds crack and reverberate in an alienating fog of synth, and with hints of Depeche Mode’s ‘Little 15’, it’s as bleak as hell, too. ‘threshold’ is dark and boldly theatrical, like Bauhaus battling it out in the studio with Gary Numan.

There’s no light here: this is dark and it feels like a dragging weight on your chest, on your heart. Drawing on early 80s electro but adding the clinicality of contemporary production – and a dash of Nine Inch Nails – Frost Drought is a challenging work, thick, dense, and intense, it’s a heavy listen, and one that’s incredibly intense.

AA

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Elizabeth Joan Kelly – LF17/Edinburgh

Posted: 25 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Mortality Tables are blasting out the second series of LIFEFILES releases at quite a pace, and LF17 is the seventh release in the season.

Describing LIFEFILES as ‘creative exchanges’; the premise is simple: ‘Recordings of places, people, objects, moments in time, environments and quotidian events are shared with a range of artists working with sound. Those artists are then free to respond to the recordings in any way they like, either through manipulation or composition.’

LF17/Edinburgh is Elizabeth Joan Kelly’s response to a set of recordings made in Edinburgh in August of 2021 by Mat Smith, namely Emeka Ogboh ‘Song Of The Union’ installation, Calton Hill (24.08.2021), Princes Street Gardens (24.08.2021), and Car on Calton Road cobblestones (25.08.2021).

The titles are plain, factual, locational, without any sense of the temporal or any indication of connotation, association, or resonance. And this is fitting, since the three compositions – ‘Calton Hill’, ‘Princes Street Gardens’, and ‘Calton Road Cobblestones’ are gentle, electroambient works which speak little of either the time or the place. These pieces are very much responses to the recordings themselves, rather than their location. Based in New Orleans, and purveyor of ‘post-apocalyptic junkyard drone pop’, Kelly has brought her own perspective to the source materials. Of course, this is precisely the spirit of the project – to see how each artist interacts with the material to forge something new, and the fact that each artist will have a completely different approach is what makes this so interesting. Because when given material and parameters, however much freedom an artist has, those parameters will also have a bearing on the output alongside the variables of the input itself and the artist’s methodologies.

In Elizabeth Joan Kelly’s hands, the sounds of a vibrant city are rendered, smoothed, with cross-hatching, delicate shading, some light smudging, a soft blending, by which everything clamorous is faded out to leave a slow hazing. There is, ultimately, no sense of Edinburgh itself here, and we find ourselves adrift, drifting on slow tides of sound with no connection to time or space. It’s not an unpleasant experience, by any means.

LF17/Edinburgh couldn’t be further removed stylistically from Ergo Phizmiz’s release, The Tin Drummer Has Collapsed, which came out only the week before. Where there was collaging, there is blending, mixing, reshaping, and where there was noise, there is calm. Neither release is in any way ‘better’ than the other – just different. And these differences are to be embraced.

AA

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On The Ropes – On The Ropes (EP)

Posted: 9 February 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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23rd February 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

On the Ropes started out in 2012, but called it a day with a farewell show in November 2019. Not a bad run for any band, but especially not for a ‘local’ band with dayjob commitments and all the rest. Being in a band, and maintaining it, is hard work – really hard work, especially in recent years. Even pre-COVID, unless you’re filling O2 arenas and selling fucktonnes of albums and merch, sustaining a band as anything more than a hobby was a challenge, and as such beyond the reach of most working-class people who can’t afford luxuries like guitars or amps. In the early days of punk, anyone could pick up a guitar, learn three chords, and for a band. Those days are gone: even if you can afford a guitar and learn three chords, where are you going to play? The industry is fucked – at least for all but the major labels, and acts who score deals without even playing enough gigs to build a following before being scooped up and being handed major support tours and slots at Glastonbury before the debut single even hits Spotify.

I know I’ve been sniffy – to say the least – about pop-punk. I’ve been sniffy about a lot, and I make no apology for it. As a critic, as much as I try on the one hand to be as objective as possible, I also am of the fundamental view that music is personal, subjective. Music that demonstrates more technical proficiency certainly isn’t superior because of it. But, as I say, I’ve been pretty down on punk-pop. But I’ve always said that there are two kinds of music – good, and bad, and maintained the position that there are great songs, even great bands, within every genre, even emo, nu-metal, and ska-punk. Well, maybe not ska-punk. There’s always a bridge too far somewhere.

Anyway, a full nine years on from their last proper release (discounting a cover of The Spice Girls’ ‘2 Become 1’ at Christmas, following a return to live shows last year, On the Ropes have reconvened for a new self-titled EP, with seven songs which stand some way above your identikit punk-pop template stuff, and I suppose it’s the sameness – and the endless buoyancy – of so much of the genre that grinds my gears. There’s a melancholy, a wistfulness, that pervades even the most upbeat songs on offer here, and while the vocals are super-clean and super-melodic – the pop, you might say, the guitars are beefy and up in the mix and the drumming is fast and hard, very much placing the emphasis on the punk element.

‘Deserter’ kicks off with a blast of energy and some well-timed minor chords which create a dynamic twist and an emotionally-rich – and yes, I suppose emo – edge. This is very much the characteristic form of their songs. And it works. This isn’t dumb, cheesy pop-punk, and nor is it self-pitying, whiny emo: it’s emo gone grown up, reflective, and exploring themes of love and loss, but letting it all out, and the songs are both punchy and catchy thanks to the contrast between the instruments and the vocals.

The slower, sadder, introspective ‘West Coast Living’ is certainly more Placebo than Panic! At the Disco, while ‘Broken Shutter’ packs a delicate verse with an explosive chorus and manages to be aching and epic and achieves it all in two-and-a-half minutes. ‘Saturnine’ has a Twin Atlantic vibe to it, and while it’s perhaps not the strongest song of the set, it’s hard to deny the quality of the songwriting, or the fact that this EP feels like the work of a much, much bigger band.

Local fans are going to relish this return, for sure – and given the quality on offer here, maybe they’ll actually become the much bigger band.

AA

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West Wickhams – Vivre Sa Vie

Posted: 8 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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1st December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

My introduction to West Wickhams was the day their debut single ‘He’s Acquired a New Face’ crashed my inbox in the Autumn of 2019. Something about it absolutely gripped me. Something about it was strange and different. And of course, it’s no longer available anywhere. But it was the only thing they had out at the time, and for various reasons, I didn’t get wind of subsequent releases, the first of which arrived almost a year later, and now it turns out I’ve got some catching up to do, as it turns out they’ve knocked out not one, but two five-track EPs since June 2022. But first, Vivre Sa Vie. A nine track EP!!!

Admittedly, when most of the tracks are around two to two-and-a-half minutes in length, it’s definitely got an EP running time, and would easily fit on a 10” record, but still.

It’s a joy to discover that while the songwriting has evolved and expanded, they’re still magnificently idiosyncratic, and still revel in every layer of echo and reverb going. ‘I am Sparkling Cyanide’ is a mid-tempo shimmery tune that’s almost poppy, bringing together early 80s synth pop with a dash of The Jesus and Mary Chain, all spun through a shoegaze filter. But ‘The Maddening Crowd’ is a piston-pumping blast of fucked-up psychedelic surf rock with an agitated bassline and relentless cheapy drum machine creating a rigid spine, over which even cheaper synth notes tinkle and twinkle.

With its nagging bassline and monotonous programmed beat ‘Carla Suspiria’ plunges into haunting early 80s goth territory, its heavy atmospherics reminiscent of early Danse Society. The vocals – like the guitar – are almost lost in a cavernous reverb. The atmosphere gets darker still on ‘I’m Spinning I’m Spinning’: the fat bass sound is pure Cure and listening to it feels like floating in space – detached, disorientated, out of body.

‘At the Cinema’ transforms the mundane into a heightened emotional experience, channelling Joy Division all the way, even down to the sounds of breaking glass.

The large number of tracks is by no means an indication that they’ve just bunged everything on there just because they’ve got it: Vivre Sa Vie is quality all the way, and they’ve utilised the space afforded by the longer format to structure the sequence in a way that feels like there’s a flow and a certain linearity, punctuating the really bleak gloomers with the poppier efforts.

The final track, ‘Damned Defiant!’ crashes in on a barrage of beefy percussion countered by chiming synths, and it’s a total assimilation of The Cure’s catalogue, and it’s rendered so magically, and in the space of two minutes and nine seconds that it can only be described as doomy goth-pop perfection.

AA

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The Supplements – Moving On

Posted: 7 January 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s quite refreshing to find an EP with only three tracks. At the risk of coming on like a nostalgia sap, it takes me back to the late 80s and early 90s, when I first got into music and buying records, when 7” EPs would often contain three tracks. There was something tidy about the format. Then again, a lot of 80s releases would feature two tracks on the 7” and add an additional B-side to the 12”, which was also pretty tidy – before the days of extended remixes and CD EPs which would tediously pack out the space with multiple versions of the single, none of which were often worth the bother, but of course, collectors would feel compelled to buy all of the different formats and the single would achieve a higher chart placing thanks to cynical marketing.

The Supplements, from Fort Lauderdale, describe their sound as ‘moody post-punk meets riff-lead indie rock’, and while post-punk is my thing, it’s the indieness that draws me to this release, and nit only on account of the EP format and the fact the lead track is a mere 2:44, with the longest song being not much over three minutes.

While my loathing of Morrissey and a general sense of ‘outgrowing’ The Smiths in recent years may have eclipsed my one-massive love for the band, there’s no denying that they were the absolute kings of the perfectly succinct single, and there’s clearly an element of that tight songwriting in the zero-fat brevity on the songs The Supplements serve up here.

But another aspect of the band’s sound which is utterly compelling is that darker post-punk element, which is pure Interpol. Now, after hearing all the raving about Interpol being the new Joy Division, I was sorely disappointed the day I picked up their first two albums. But once I had come to terms with the fact that the critics were just wrong in their reviews, I came to love those albums, and the ones which followed (apart from the last one, which is toss). And it’s that dark but jangly thing – think ‘Say Hello to the Angels’, with the kind of descending runs which can be found on ‘Slow Hands’ – which The Supplements do so well.

‘Another Day’, the lead track, boasts a driving bass, and Ted O’Connell’s vocals are pitched around the baritone of Paul Banks’. ‘I Can’t Have Everything’ is defined by a choppy guitar underpinned by a chunky bass groove, and the last few bars seem to lean heavily on the intro to ‘Slow Hands’. ‘Different Light’ – nothing to do with The Bangles – again brings some nagging guitars reminiscent of the intro to ‘Roland’ and the mid-section of ‘The New’ and a strong rhythm section, where a strolling bass holds tight against some urgent drumming. With Moving On, The Supplements deserve to be moving up too, because this is pure quality.

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