Thing of the Day 

Four for today: Damerels, Breathe Out, Grinderman and Thracia

March 16th 2011

Thing Of The Day today is the double seven inch single set in a hand customised pizza box from Plymouth garage punks Damerels…

DAMERELS – Desperation (Onec) – Very limited double 7” set, two pieces of vinyl in a ‘hand finished’ pizza box that also contains a CD of the tracks and a number of inserts and such; the creative people of Onec like to go that extra mile in terms of the package and presentation. The music, then: four tracks of prime-time raw blustery garage punk rock & roll, delivered with a scathing barb and a left-field twist or two. The Plymouth three piece have an aggressively relentless sound, a raw dirty sound, a ragged pounding thrashing sound, adding an explosive touch of early garage flavoured Motorhead to their punk rock menace ...a bit of Black Flag rumble, a hint or two of The Damned squaring up to the Stooges or prime MC5 in there with all that scathing noise and the pounding rhythm section. 

Darkly menacing and right there in your face making an impression, demanding your love and affection in there with their sinister street punk lurking and their tales of violent lovers and assertions that She’ll Wear A Mask…  she’ll wear whatever he wants screams the raw throaty man and the hints of post-punk stiletto scars, howling and raging like they’re straight out of Detroit rather than the West of England. No wannabe Americans though, this is natural born English garage punk rock bare knuckle confrontation. Do we detect a touch of Victorian music hall freak show come see the monster in there? Whatever it is we like their twisted menace, their broken bottle raw throated burn ups, their glorious noise and that sinister undercurrent…
www.reverbnation.com/damerels      
www.onec.tv/
Onec Records are a Plymouth based label who “put out what we like and we like what we want”, their releases are never conventionally packaged, real labours of DIY love and handmade pieces of art… 

And while we’re here, some other things to cast an ear and an eye or two at…

BREATHE OUT – Breathe Out EP (Art Hard) – Hard-edged knee-scraper of an opening track. It isn’t all raw and roaring, though, there's several dimensions here; second track is a delightful upbeat mellow kind of J.Mascis Lemonheads thing, third track finds the ground somewhere between the first two. Haven’t got the track titles, they’re on the disc and the disc is in the player. 

There’s a confident edge to these recordings, a hint of a new band who might just have something a little more about them in terms of both drive and imagination. Five rather decent alt,pop/rock pieces of diversity with enough eclectic appeal about them to make us want to go search out more. Nice attitude in terms of how they present the music as well - they say: “we have decided to release the EP in the form of a photozine, a sixteen page miniature magazine images taken in preparation for the the release”. 

Fifth track here has a lush synth driven undercurrent that takes them a little way towards a mellow, relaxed Kraut rock-flavoured alt.guitarpoprock feel. Breathe Out’s combination of sounds aren’t anything that new or radically different, but there is something extra, a little touch of something that’s intriguing, a little touch of extra quality… breathebreatheout.blogspot.com/     

GRINDERMAN – Palace Of Montezuma (Mute) – In which Nick Cave and company go all Rolling Stones (or Primal Scream) with a new single and a custard coloured super-dream of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen, with psychedelic invocations, the hanging gardens of Babylon, Miles Davis and the Black Unicorn. Nice Cave as Mick Jagger and the spinal cord of JFK wrapped in the negligee of Marilyn Monroe, come on baby let’s get out of gold, gimmie gimmie gimmie… Grinderman are rather good at being the Stones. We like…  www.grinderman.com 

THRACIA – Sea Of Tediocrity (self release) – More of that raw blistering female-fronted shouty punky street metal cocktail of in your face do-not-mess-with-me aggression from this band from the midlands of England. Ramming speed, foot right down once more. Thracia make great recordings, always delivered with a splatter and a raw no messing set of confrontations - you just do not want mess with Jen. Five tracks this time, five more slices of blistering street punk of a shouty Vice Squad raw-throated metal riffed nature, who knows who or what has pissed her off this time, who is she raging at? Don’t ask, just agree with her… www.myspace.com/thraciatowers