If your vision of California rock n roll begins and ends with lap dancers on the Sunset Strip, riding your steel motorcycle into the romantic sunset or worrying about dockside industrial relations, then California punk upstarts The Nopes are about to light a bomb under your preconceptions.
Nectar of the Dogs (admittedly, a decent play on words), out now via Magnetic Eye, is five songs of sonic terrorism it’s acidic, acerbic, scabrous punk rock which, if he is listening, Bob Mould should be getting on the phone to his lawyer about as it sounds like his old band, Husker Du. Wait: check that. It sounds exactly like Husker Du – from the layer upon layer of guitar distortion, some of it amp-led, some of it studio twiddling, this is college rock à la 1985 writ large. Or, as Bob might have it, large writ.
I hope he’s not that grumpy though. He needn’t be. This is an EP full of piss and vinegar, in the nicest possible way. Nectar of the Dogs is eight minutes (yes, you did read that correctly) of furious, life-affirming noise. From the opening bars of ‘Matinee at Market’ to the closer, ‘Jingle Berries’, this is the aural equivalent of falling downstairs drunk- bangs, crashes, wallops and a big shit-eating grin whilst it’s all happening.
If you care about this sort of thing, you might be interested to know that production comes from those guys who twiddled knobs for Deafheaven and their début album Sunbather (Deathwish, Inc.). Whether this matters or not, I couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you though is Nectar of the Dogs is a punk record that genuinely sounds punk. Amen to that.
7.0/10
MAT DAVIES