Labels: Sabermetric – SuperFi – White Denim
Review by: Alex Hannan
I wonder if there’s an element of vindication in the past year’s events for GOOD THROB, after reaping praise outside the UK and successfully touring the US, since I can imagine the domestic messageboard trolls they faced early on seething: how dare they sidestep mysterious guy hardcore and black metal influences, find ways to be caustic and weird without chugging out palm muted chords, talk about the grooming of twats, and attract American attention without our approval! Why can’t those lesbians just get their own scene!* But I imagine the members of the band are too busy with their other DIY projects to gloat.
On their debut LP their sound still veers between raucous aggression and a swaggering disdain for precision or a “right way to play”: the vocals are still spat out in short bursts of venom, articulating bilious hatred or a Beckettian self-disgust: Ash’s basslines are still aggressively dug note by note out of the strings. Bryony’s guitar parts seem to have become more flexible in mood, executing the primitive, repetitive thump of old as roughly as ever, but now including more abstracted, cyclic ideas and weirder chords. “Acid house” being a case in point, welding the start/stop interplay of older tracks like “Torture Garden” to a long, wayward post-punk guitar riff. The muted, melancholy haze of “Pale grey suits” also sounds like a new development. There is more negative space in the songwriting, and more rhythmic diversity, like the percussionless verses in “No Taste” – whereas the weaker demo-era songs were carried along more on energy and gusto, now the structures themselves take more of the weight. But they haven’t cleaned up too much, as evidenced by the lurching gait of “Central Line.”
GOOD THROB’s lyrics have in the past encompassed a sort of sly coarseness, through blunt punk rhyme, satire and irony, and wild surrealism. This set of lyrics seem a little more restrained (as much as an LP titled “Fuck Off” can ever be), with a greater focus on alienated social caricature. Some involve the warped hells of the places people go to have fun – “Peeling poster / Cigarette stub / Rusty sink / Vaporub / Cat shit / White gloves / Folk punk / Cheap drugs / Light shining in my eye / In the dark / Fucked up guy,” begins “Acid house.” “Central line” conveys everyday tube nightmares; “Stare me down ’til I shrink away / Just want to die when I feel your sneeze spray / Big balls man needs lots of space / Spread out your legs / This is your place / Central line / Dog eat dog / Feel the sweat / Breathe in the smog.” On each of the previous 7″s there were odd little subtleties like the clash of register between lyrics and music in “Culture vulture”, or the way that the narrator of “Bag” never broke character from the customer service spiel, and the tone of voice carried another level of meaning; these lyrics seem less layered in that respect, but no less effective.
Sticky, cartoonish self-disgust has always been a part of the GOOD THROB psychodrama, and the gleefully infantile abjection of “Mummy I’m ugly” is one of the highlights here. Elsewhere are the first songs targeting creepy men that I can remember from GT, like “Crab walk,” which skewers the attentions of an awkward would-be seducer. Ellie’s delivery of the final line “JUST WONDERING / JUST WONDERING / JUST WONDERING / JUST WONDERING / Daaaaaaa you wanna goooooo for a DRINK some toooime” is priceless. “Dog food dick” is a distilled hate song: “Piece of shit man sees women as fucks / Silent pets who clean and suck / Lads mag douchebag / He likes them petite / Cretinous wanker / “Big tits and small feet” / Tear off your cock / Pedigree chum / Feed it to the dog / You imbecile scum / Dog food dick.” The relationship between the band’s articulate feminist analysis in interview and the way this filters into the aesthetic of the songs is interesting: when they touch explicitly on these topics on record they don’t so much seek to explain, argue or analyse as find joyfully nasty zingers to toss out (like the relish of “PISS ON THEIR CHIPS AND LOVE IT”, from “Feminazi” on the first 7″) – and yet some songs also take place in a recognizable continuum of occurrences, like male bodies taking up too much space (“Central line,”) unwanted attention in bars (“Crab walk”), which make up another part of the picture.
The aggression, the sarcasm, the playfulness and gleeful obscenity are registers I can’t see many other bands successfully combining, and their sound remains fresh and distinctive. Personally, I would like to see things get weirder in the future- I like their surreal, abrasive side – but whatever happens I think this is an LP to be proud of.
*a quote which the band themselves brandish on their bandcamp.