Thing of the Day
A Bag of Things: Good Police, Herpes, Scumbag Philosopher and Not Otherwise Specified
July 18th 2011
Several Things today:
GOOD POLICE
are a mathy post rock band making their first moves, Berlin’s HERPES have a new
album, and yes it is catchy, Norwich’s SCUMBAG PHILOSOPHER
have their geeky jerky new album, and finally NOT OTHERWISE SPECIFIED
have a full mix of North American hard rock and old school prog.
First up, some early mathy moves from Aberdeen’s Good Police…
GOOD POLICE
– Initial steps and first recordings of an instrumental band from
Aberdeen. The Scottish two piece are raw right now, but they’re
exploring positive ideas somewhere near the fields where bands like Don
Caballero or Slint plough their musical seeds. Early days yet, but the
shoots are already looking and sounding promising.
Fresh tastes of
mathy post rock, and yes very Don Cab in terms of the flowing texture
and the way things feel, some tasty bits of raw complexity from a band
still searching for a finger print of their own. Good Police are a band
still finding themselves, a band worth checking in on already, this
four track EP is more than worth your time, they clearly are still
growing into their clothes and it can be little bit obvious in places
right now, but we do look forward to the next moves from Good Police.
There are signs here that they may just take it all somewhere rather
interesting sometime soon, this is more than a healthy first set of
recordings.
www.myspace.com/goodpolicemusic
goodpolice.bandcamp.com/
Next, yes, Berlin’s HERPES
are ca…
HERPES – Symptoms And Ailments
(Tapete) - Some wise guy around here just said, bet this lot are really
catchy, as the Herpes CD was thrown at the music cruncher we feed this
endless mountain of discs into… The wise guy was right, Herpes are as
catchy as… (fill in the rest of this sentence yourself).
Herpes are from Berlin, this is their second album, the follow up to
their debut Das Kommt
Von Kussen (or It
Comes From Kissing in English). Not entirely sure what
they’re on about, as they, reasonably enough, sing it all in German.
They sing in a spiky staccato style, an angular new wave Krautrock
drive, all angular and obtuse and awkwardly fluid, wired art rock of a
Devo meets Gang of Four, Mekons nature.
They talk of Krautrock, they
insist their take on the style is not the “hippie-blues-rock idea of
Krautrock, but rather the Neu style..” Fluid punky
krautrock, spiky pointy delivery, straight at you, no messing,
metronomic goodness and all a little manic, suicide covering Pere Ubu,
rugged yet solid and flowing with such urgently good Germanic elegance
- very, very good.
Symptoms And Ailments
is out in the UK on July 25th
www.tapeterecords.de/artists/herpes/
Next:
Scumbag Philosopher follow their recent declaration that god is dead so they listen to Radiohead, with their new album…
SCUMBAG
PHILOSOPHER – It Means
Nothing So It Means Nothing (Words On Music)
- - They’re awkwardly good, they sound a little geeky, like
they might spend their time cataloguing their vinyl record collection
and sing songs about simple trigonometry and mathematical shapes and
god being dead so they listen to Radiohead. Scumbag Philosopher are
from Norwich, they were once called Fuck Dress and now they’re not,
they deal out call and response lyrics, him out front calling, her on
drums responding. They know what time the buses run, they know where to
go to find their fun. Not many songs about CB radios these days, got
your ears on? Have you moved on? State of the art, now garage sale? You
can’t let vinyl down… All kinds of Wire and Fall and Gang Of Four
staccato angles and pointy stabby post-punk tunes and English eccentric
goodness with an added bit of New Wave geek..
It Means Nothing
is out now
www.scumbagphilosopher.com/
More Scumbag Philosopher Organ coverage here… organart.com/organthing193.html
And finally, NOT
OTHERWISE SPECIFIED, proper North American hard rock
flavoured old school prog…
NOT OTHERWISE
SPECIFIED – Judgment
(self release) – What we have here is rather healthy mix of energetic
full-bodied proper prog rock. Prog that comes laced with a North
American hard rock edge that flavours the rather classic, sometimes
very British sounding, 80’s flavoured sound. Judgement is an
album alive with those glorious early Marillion style guitar lines that
fly alongside classic bits of chunky Pallas or Geoff Mann period
Twelfth Night sounding keyboard passages. The whole Judgement cocktail
is driven by the hard rock feel of late 70’s US bands like Styx, Kansas
or maybe even Montrose - that’s right, classic mix of American hard
rock and early Eighties British class of ’83 Marquee Choral Society
proper undiluted cool as f*** prog rock. Big fat
chunks of meaty prog that does everything you want it to, totally
unoriginal and nothing anywhere near anything you haven’t heard before,
but hey, who cares!?
Not Otherwise Specified talk of Spock’s Beard and
Dream Theater as influences, but no, this is coming from a time before
prog got blanded out by the awful Dream Beards of this world, a time
when prog rocked and people demanded a bit more than the sanitised
non-adventure the Spock’s Theaters appear to get away with serving up
to their not very demanding audiences there days. Not Otherwise have
far more life than the Spocks Beard types – there’ s more edge, more
bite, more anything - let’s be frank here, Dream Theater are tediously
average, Spock’s Beard are boring, it may not be something to admit in
public, but early Marillion still sounds good, 70’s Styx still sounds
cool, those keyboard lines of early Twelfth Night still sound glorious,
and so does this album. All aforementioned elements are here: the blend
of hard rock and classic prog.
Look, if you’re not an old school
proghead who likes their music delivered with a bit of balls, if you
don’t have a taste for late 70’s North American hard rock of say Sammy
Hagar, April Wine or Triumph, if you don’t still appreciate
the glory days of early Marillion, Twelfth Night or Pallas, then is
very much not for you. Dream Theater are playing in a park
next door to us next week, we’ll be keeping the windows closed, this on
the other hand is progtastically bombastically good. Main man Craig
Kerley has a killer voice, he’s got the guitar just right, he’s got the
keyboards even more just right, he’s got everything just about right,
Judgement certainly doesn’t sound like one guy, from Atlanta GA, with a
self-released album, it sound like a very very tasty, totally
unoriginal slice of American hard rock laced, late 70’s, early 80’s
prog rock… you’ll either love it or you’ll not want to go anywhere near
it. Shame about the cheesy artwork, naff website and awful band name,
but hey, all about the music right?
Right.
www.nosband.com
