Thing of the Day
Sarandon's Age of Reason
March 1st 2011
Thing of the Day today is
the new album that is Sarandon’s story of Big Trev, and their frantic agit pop
that more than deserves to feature on the roll call…
SARANDON – Sarandon’s Age of Reason
(Odd Box) – One of those frantic records, all scratchy guitar in an
angular hurry to get somewhere in a bluster of urgency. All scratchy
and poppy (in a very unpoppy kind of way) and standing up like The Fall
but they could fall off at anytime. Short songs, short and sharp and
full of all the dreams and aspirations that eventually get knocked out,
like they have for Trev here - for this is the story of Big Trev (with
narrated bits linking the songs together, narrated by The Shend, he of The Cravats). And it
it worth mentioning the sound of The Cravats here, that and the recent
notions of what some were calling Wrong Pop. Yes, Wrong Pop is a better
description, not unpoppy, just wrong pop, and wrong pop, as you know,
is very right…
Cheese-wire treble of a guitar sound, angular agit-rock and rhythm section frantically clunking along as they declare that they rather like Big Trev. Big Trev mustn’t grumble even though things wind him up, mobile phones when you’re going to the toilet or about to eat and people calling for no reason and buses turning up on time and on the rare occasion it does happen you can’t believe that it actually happened to you. There go Sarandon, stopping and starting and shambling away like urgent buses staying on time in the busy traffic. Do the dance, the dance, the dance of death… all art brutal and in a hurry and Trev’s name is in the list of names of people who use the library, but he probably won’t feature on the roll call of people on earth who were actually of importance, when the time comes for that roll call to be called and things come to an end on this planet – “there you go, I am nothing” declares Big Trev. Sarandon can get funky, funky in a post-punk agit pop scratchy guitar kind of way, sometimes the story gets quite moving, and they are catchy and tunes going somewhere and not just strings of consciousness. They’re going to be popular, popular since the first time they… alright then, maybe not popular household names or on the tips of the tongues of anyone other than those of us who still miss John Peel.
We do like this urgent rushing about, tunes going to all corners at once, and we’re all gonna get what we want… holidays in places other than Spain, just follow Trev’s directions to the letter, nail hit firmly and squarely on the head, sign on the dotted line, initial it there, don’t ask questions, this is a serious album now…
“They wanted to make exciting, snappy, itchy, uncontrollable pop music and so they do”, so says their biog. Their biography is right, they do, if you really need to find who this classic English post-punk new-wave no-wave wrong pop band, I could tell you more but any fool can regurgitate an on-line biog and quickly ‘remember’ to namedrop Bogshed and the Crayola connection or Big Flame, but you can hit the link and explore for yourselves of course - they’re worth it, this is memorably good..
Listen: Big Trev - Sarandon by Odd Box Records
Sarandon’s Ages Of Reason
is out on March 28th
www.oddboxrecords.com
www.sarandon.net
ODD BOX Sarandon page with sounds and such - http://oddboxrecords.com/?p=699
IMPORTANT FACT: "To celebrate the release of the album there will also be Sarandon’s Age Of Reason Beer especially brewed by the Revolutions Brewing Co (www.revolutionsbrewing.co.uk ) coming as cask & bottled beer with super limited edition beermats for the collectors out there"
And while we’re here, a
single worth a short mention…
SINGLE: MAYBESHEWILL – Critical Distance
(Function) - Pleasantly harmless two tracker, more post-rock
instrumentalism, nothing too heavy; mellow and relaxing in a feel-good
kind of way. Sounds like background music for a documentary or maybe
one of those goal of the month sequences on Match of The Day. You kind
of know exactly where the tunes are going will before Maybeshewill get
there, those sudden bits of jump-on-the-pedal post-rock loudness and
such are well signposted. No surprises here, nice enough breezy
uplifting post rock instrumentals with no risk taking, no real desire
to take it anywhere new, a harmlessly likeable uplifting single – and
it is kind of hard not to like the pleasantness of Critical Distance
while you wonder why they don’t push themselves (and challenge us
listeners) just a little bit more. Out on March 7th
www.maybeshewill.net
