Tag Archives: Husker Du

EP REVIEW: Swervedriver – The World’s Fair  

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Swervedriver were formed in 1989 and lumped into the Shoegaze genre, alongside Lush, Chapterhouse, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and fellow Oxfordians Ride. The band’s catalogue is extensive and consists of six full-length albums and eight EP’s of which The World’s Fair is the latest; the latter following up from last year’s outtakes/ demos collection Doremi Faso Latido (aka CD3 of the band’s reissued-classic-99th-Dream). The band’s somewhat sizeable catalogue is impressive even taking into account the fact that they had disbanded for a period of eight years, 1999 – 2007 with frontman Adam Franklin going on to forge an equally productive solo career under his own name as well as part of the bands Toshack Highway, Magnetic Morning and the Sophia collective.  Continue reading →


God Damn- Everything Ever

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tumblr_odyjn04t6c1tcuaago1_1280When you release an album as strong and visceral as “Vultures” as your début calling card which British rock band God Damn did in 2015- then you might forgive the band for heading their bets when it came to their second offering. It would have been very easy and very tempting to deliver another slab of their corrosive, howling rock’n’roll. In this age of not really being able to take real risks, giving the punters another Vultures might have been a very good idea indeed. Continue reading →


The Nopes – Nectar of the Dogs EP

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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

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MAT DAVIES