Ringing Ears

'Tis a sad day across Europe. Probably best to take the piss out of them, it really winds the fascists up. And in song form! Good work, Jonny & The Baptists!

Opening couple of lines: “Does anyone remember the old brigade? / Legionnaire’s disease and hand grenades”. ‘He Of The Slow Creep’ does not skimp on the graphic war imagery, with references to field dressings, Stalingrad and more to follow, and ultimately this is what raises Silver Arm’s brand of strident post-punk above the rabble.

The are some great textures in amongst the music of ‘The Beigeness’ -crunchy bass, subdued sirens - but, really, it’s all about the lyrics with Kate Tempest (unsurprisingly given her esteemed poetry and theatre background). “Life is huge, but we have shrunk it”; “Everybody say nothing, stay bland”; “We’re kissing the coshes that cripple us / Enjoying the beigeness” - her glare on society is razor-sharp and unrelenting.

Melt Yourself Down's debut album is full of really quite marvellously weird yet impossibly danceable jazz-funk, and 'Release!' is the pick of the bunch. Bongos, trumpets and techno tumble over one another, backed by the grooviest of basslines and interspersed with ritualistic, effects-laden vocals. Use to summon the god of fabulousness.

For a moment it looks like ‘What She Wants’ might be heading in that most in-vogue of directions, deep house. This thought has sand poured over it by guitar licks evoking their Nile Rodgers-fronted namesakes, before it is well and truly buried as the vocals kick in and Go Chic!’s true electropop colours shine through. File under ‘Should win Eurovision from now until forever’.

Well-executed electro-swing surely contains enough pure musical joy to bring a smile to the most cantankerous of faces, and the impeccably executed melding of brass and house on 'Catgroove' represents just a glimpse of Parov Stelar's gleeful back catalogue. 

To end latest album ‘War Room Stories’ Breton diverge from their usual deft electropop into a slice of perky leftfield house, twinkling throughout like the soundtrack to a glimpse of a fairy at dusk to take the weight from the heavier techno vibes.

Eerie electronica warps and fades its way around you on ‘In Cover’. When the beats start properly kicking in the creep factor goes up by another few thousand and I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to run for the hills from sheer dread, but stick with it and you’ll be absorbed into Dead Fader’s twisted world.

Pahahahaha, ludicrous hardcore / speed metal? Wait, it’s actually good? OK then. When ‘Don’t Touch That Dial’, with its breakneck, harsh (yet fun) riffs, screaming about nothing in particular, change of pace every ten seconds and general bludgeoning ridiculousness is one of the more sane songs by a band, you know you’re on to something.

A strong Durham accent is not often heard in music, and as a result No Ditching get one unique sound in theirs for free. Mix it with sardonic lyrics of the “most of the people I meet are shitheads” (from ‘Meat In Your Teeth’) variety and a fistful of jangly, impossible to dislike guitar lines and you have the sort of band who ought to go far but will probably end up with no more than 100 fans who all absolutely adore them. Hurrah for those bands.

Easily the strongest of the three songs the rather excellent Klaxons have released so far preceding the release of third album Love Frequency, ‘Children Of The Sun’ bridges the gap magnificently between their nu-rave past and their apparent pure dance future. The backing vocals are glorious, like an incantation to the heavenly body of the title, while in the foreground the two Jamies on co-vocals and some bubbling techno lead the ritual seemingly being performed on an amped-up, misfiring dial-up modem. Rapturous.

Garage rock par excellence from what is seemingly the UK’s current riffage focal point, Brighton (see also Blood Red Shoes, Royal Blood, Tigercub, etc…). Spit Shake Sisters manage to stand out from the crowd with propulsive fuzzy guitar work, a great turn of phrase - the title itself, “I got a kick in the soul”, and so on - and a deft breakdown section which stays determinedly on the right side of self-indulgence. Noisily compelling.

The melancholy of ‘Give”s pipe organ-esque synths cuts deep, man. It cuts deep. The vocals aren’t much cheerier either. One for lying in bed sobbing to, in the best way, then, with a couple of delightful little drumroll-concluding cymbal clinks just enough to raise the beginnings of a smile in the midst of the sorrow.

Have Yvette made contact with extraterrestrial life? Based on the middle section of ‘Pure Pleasure’, where the rest of the music drops out to in the wake of some magnificently otherworldly feedback patterns, it seems the answer may be yes. Meanwhile, the surrounding noise rock is equally uncompromising, the guitar sound neutron-star heavy, the drums warlike and the vocals the product of a mind probe victim. Basically, it’s intergalactic sonic warfare.

Abrasive is the first word that springs to mind to describe ‘Telo’, gripping with its intriguingly offbeat sandpaper-on-cheesegrater take on underground bass, while techno and dub touches add some light to the initial industrial tunnel.

The rumbling bass on ‘Kerosene Girl’ brings to mind a huge invading army on the march, equally loud and equally foreboding wherever you go to try to escape it. The guitars, meanwhile, are only too glad to get in on the doom forecasting action, progressing from noirish riffs on the early verses to a discordant racket for the chorus and eventually a harrowing, siren-like blare as the song climaxes. When you add in the pain and resentment of Nick Thieneman’s lyrics and vocals you know that Young Widows are not to be messed with.

I think you’d probably better just tell them where your car is, Debbie. Slaves are going to keep barking at you otherwise. Gauging by the sheer weight of the riffs backing up the words, they’re pretty intent on finding out where your car is. They’re punks, Debbie. Just tell them where your car is.