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Weird Dreams - Choreography (album)

Crocodiles - Sunday (Psychic Conversation #9) 7”

The Hairs - I’ve Been Working Out 7”

King Creosote and Jon Hopkins - Third Swan single

Cate Le Bon - Cyrk (album)

Tashaki Miyaki - sings the Everly Brothers 7”

Antony Harding - The Birds Sing Goodnight To You And Me (album)

Veronica Falls - My Heart Beats 7”

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Album Review

Noisy Album Round-up: Ex Wives / The Conformists / Castrovalva
Fucking Dutch / Three Hundred / We Are A Unit Radio is Down / Africantape / Brew

Article written by Matt H - Apr 16, 2010

Did straight-edge, hardcore, math-rock, whatever you want to call it ever go away? If it did, muscular rhythmic bass and drums, clanging guitars and angrily hollered vocals are all back, back, back (and not all of them are produced by Steve Albini). Kong and That Fucking Tank but might be amongst the more celebrated (hey, everything’s relative) but they’re not alone in echoing the more harshly independent sounds of the 80s.

Ex Wives - XWAGS?

The bird-masked Ex-Wives’ offering Fucking Dutch is four tracks of typically accomplished stuff, the bass with the right doom-laden tones, the vocals confrontationally offering short sharp soundbites of well, something a bit cross by the sound of it.

Conformists - spartan rock

The Conformists’ 300 is a re-release of an old recording (which does have Mr A on engineering duties). They’re a slightly artier proposition, less controlled with jazzier rhythms (you can’t help feeling there’s a frustrated progster heart beating away in each of these bands) and the odd quieter moment but nevertheless plenty of dread filled hollering and a proper absence of fun.

These are both decent bands, but they’re the very sound of furrowed brows. You can’t help thinking there’s a reason that, when Slint came along to leaven this basic sound with something of REM’s wide eyed southern rock, the world welcomed them so.

Catrovalava - Dr What the Fuck?

The apparently Dr Who-referencing Castrovalva make their own effort to liven things up by taking the less straight-faced, more metally, template of Faith No More’s harder edged moments (yes, there’s definitely funk-rock and even a bit of ska in those basslines) and welding it to a histrionic, near Axl Rose vocal and well as the more straight forward sore-throated holler and even a bit of sax. It’s a welcome increase in tempo and at the same time the most refreshing and the most potentially (and in some cases actually) annoying of the trio.

So while there’s no unqualified successes here, old gits like me can revel in the echoes of a hundred “pay no more than £3” compilation LPs safe in the knowledge that there’s still plenty of mosh pits across the country with space for short haired folks in glasses alongside their more hirsute brethren.

Links:
http://www.xwvs.com
http://www.pumppump.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/theconformists