Aural Aggro faves Pound Land have unveiled an eye-bleeding, brain-melting video for the track ‘Liar’. It’s taken from their recent Singles Club compilation, released last month on Cruel Nature, which collects all the digital singles released between April 2022 and April 2023 in a physical form. It also emerges ahead of new album Violence which is out next month.
Check it here (and please watch to the end….)
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You could say that feminist/queercore punk trio Shooting Daggers have been ‘nailing it’ since the release of their first single ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ last year.
Amongst a clutch of rave reviews of the single, they have become a ‘must see’ on the grass roots punk circuit, on top of that the band were invited to support Amyl and the Sniffers at their recent London shows and also asked to play Desertfest 2022. Their upward trajectory seems inevitable.
Perhaps it’s because they are ‘the real deal’. Shit kicking UKHC full of youthful fury and shorn of vacuous posturing. Fierce and committed in what they believe in, as how they play. Case in point being their latest track ‘Liar’. The band says …
‘Liar is a song about breaking the silence over abusers, a song that calls them out for who they really are with no more excuses. This is a really important song to us and we would like to spread this message, to not only the victims of rape and abuse, but also to the entire community, encouraging people to not engage with abusers and to stop trying to justify their rapist friends’
The video that goes with it (created by guerrilla filmmakers Punkvert TV) echoes that sentiment.
A furious cut up of images, by turns visceral and edgy, and definitely not for the faint hearted. Watch the video now:
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‘Liar’ is taken from Athames the band’s debut EP set to be released on 20th May by New Heavy Sounds. Landing on 7” eco mix coloured vinyl with an 8 page lyric booklet and full download included. Limited to 500 copies. The ep will also get a limited edition CD and audio cassette release as well as being available on digital platforms.
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Stylistically varied, Geiger Counter ranges from raw, bewildering, venomous rock to gentle folk musings. liar, flower is a new iteration of Ruby Throat, which consisted of Garside and multi-instrumentalist Chris Whittingham. As Ruby Throat, the duo released four albums and an EP between 2007 and 2017, as well as their 2018 compilations Stone Dress and Liar, Flower.
Watch the video for ‘even through the darkest clouds’, the latest single to be lifted from the album, here:
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One Little Indian – 1st May 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
Like many, Daisy Chainsaw’s incursion into the singles chart with ‘Love Your Money’ in 1992, was my introduction to KatieJane Garside. I’ll admit that I wasn’t immediately sold, and it wasn’t until I caught Queenadreena supporting The Rollins Band in the early noughties that I came to appreciate her as a performer, at once captivating and terrifying. Queenadreena, and, subsequently, Ruby Throat charted an artistic and musical progression, and Liar, Flower is a continuation, a new iteration of Ruby Throat, consisting of Garside and multi-instrumentalist Chris Whittingham.
The band moniker intimates the kind of juxtapositionality of Daisy Chainsaw: pretty, delicate, and brutal, and it proves to be most fitting. Geiger Counter is mostly delicate, if not necessarily pretty, and definitely presents those elements of juxtaposition and opposition with serenity colliding with screaming abrasion in a varied set of songs.
‘9N-AFE’ is sparse, eerie, a mesmeric beatless trip-hop backing accompanies a lost, haunting vocal, and it calls to mind early Cranes. It’s followed by the slow-skipping chamber-folk of ‘baby teeth’ and the stark country hues of ‘blood berries’, which finds Garside weaving and soaring stratospheric notes and evoking Kate Bush.
Geiger Counter may be geared toward the quieter, more introspective end of the sonic spectrum, but it’s stylistically varied. The instrumentation is subtle, delicate, and remains very much in the position of accompaniment, placing Garside’s voice to the fore.
There are exceptions: ‘doors locked, oven’s off’ is a lilting acoustic instrumental just a couple of minutes in duration, while the stripped-back vaudeville ‘broken light’ suddenly breaks into jazz-tinged piano discord, and ‘even though the darkest clouds’ goes full electric, sucking hints of Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr into its maelstrom of guitars. Garside is on fire, sounding dangerous and demented. The lyrics are often difficult to decipher, but ‘don’t worry darling, I’ve got to wash my hands’ breaks through the chaos and screams OCD. Or maybe that’s just me. They rock it up again on ‘little brown shoes’ too, a scuzzy blues stomper with a solid groove where KatieJane wails like a banshee witch and growls like all the menace. The swampy ‘Mud Stars’ plunges into a miasma of soulful blues that becomes increasingly uncomfortable as it slides into a haze of noise.
The simple acoustic arrangements are understated, Garside’s vocals haunting in a way that slides beneath the skin: the brooding post-rock atmospherics of ‘Hole in my Hand’ are moving, but in an almost imperceptible way. It feels like the reflective calm after protracted spell of emotional turbulence.
There’s a clear and strong arc that carries Geiger Counter, an album which builds in volume and intensity as it progresses, culminating in the all-out abrasion of the no-wave noise rock riot that is ‘My Brain is Lit Like an Airport’. As a journey, it becomes increasingly challenging as it goes on, and as an album it’s stunning.
Aural Aggravation 